MULEPRO: a multi-channel response to jamming attacks in wireless sensor networks

The shared wireless medium used by sensor networks makes it easy for adversaries to launch jamming attacks that can partially or completely block communication leading to a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. This paper presents MLILEPRO (MULti-channel Exfiltration PROtocol), a fully distributed network based protocol designed to rapidly exfiltrate data from a jammed area using multiple communication channels simultaneously. The basic idea is to assign scheduling symbols to the different nodes based on their vertex color to produce conflict-free transmission schedules between sensor nodes, up to two-hop distance in order to address the terminal hidden problem. MULEPRO targets sensor network applications that require an immediate and robust response to such jamming-based DoS attacks and is designed to operate with any number of channels. When an attack is launched nodes can effectively coordinate exfiltration transmissions without needing to exchange network protocol information. We have extensively evaluated MULEPRO under a variety of attack configurations. Results show that MULEPRO can maintain pre-attack data transmission rates in the case of standard jamming attack models, and can exfiltrate data even for the case of multiple jammers. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.