Uncoordinated Frequency Hopping for secrecy with broadband jammers and eavesdroppers

Uncoordinated Frequency Hopping (UFH) has been proposed as a mechanism to address denial-of-service attacks, and consists of legitimate devices hopping uniformly at random between frequencies to cope with an attacker that aims to disrupt communication. We consider the use of UFH against an eavesdropper adversary that aims to overhear as much information as possible. We characterize the secrecy level of wireless networks under UFH, showing the harmful security effect of broadband eavesdropper adversaries capable of overhearing in multiple frequencies. To counter such eavesdroppers, we consider the use of broadband friendly jammers that are available to cause interference on eavesdroppers. Our results show that adding a limited number of broadband friendly jammers effectively improves the security level of such systems.