Exploiting Partial-Packet Information for Reactive Jamming Detection: Studies in UWSN Environment

Abstract

Reactive jamming in an underwater sensor network (UWSN) environment is a realistic and very harmful threat. It, typically, affects only a small part of a packet (not the entire one), in order to maintain a low detection probability. Prior works on reactive jamming detection were focused on terrestrial wireless sensor networks (TWSNs), and are limited in their ability to (a) detect it correctly, (b) distinguish the small corrupted part from the uncorrupted part of a packet, and (c) be adaptive with dynamic environment. Further, there is currently a need for a generalized framework for jamming detection that outlines the basic operations governing it. In this paper, we address these research lacunae by broadly designing such a framework for jamming detection, and specifically a detection scheme for reactive jamming. A key characteristic of this work is introducing the concept of partial-packet (PP) in jamming detection. The introduction of such an approach is unique – the existing works rely on holistic packet analysis, which degrades their performance – a fundamental issue that would substantially affect achieving real-time performance. We estimate the probability of high deviation in received signal strength (RSS) using a weak estimation learning scheme, which helps in absorbing the impact of dynamic environment. Finally, we perform CUSUM-test for reactive jamming detection. We evaluate the performance of our proposed scheme through simulation studies in UWSN environment. Results show that, as envisioned, the proposed scheme is capable of accurately detecting reactive jamming in UWSNs, with an accuracy of 100% true detection, while the average detection delay is substantially less.