An Efficient Localization and Avoidance Method of Jammers in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Jamming is a terrifying attack that could harm 802.11p-based vehicular communications by occupying the communication channels by overwhelming the network with jamming packets, especially for self-driving cars, as it is essential to send/receive messages without any interruptions to control the vehicles remotely. In wireless vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET), the attacker’s mission is more accessible due to the network’s open nature, way of communication, and lack of security measures. Most of the existing studies have focused on jamming detection approaches. However, few of them have addressed the jammer localization challenge. Moreover, even in these limited studies, the solutions’ assumptions, the proposed countermeasures, and their complexity were also missing. Therefore, this paper introduces a new approach to detecting, localizing, and avoiding jamming attacks in VANETs with high efficiency in terms of accuracy, implementation and complexity. The proposed approach uses the signal strength of the jammer for estimating only the distance between jammer and receiver, while then a less complex algorithm is proposed for localizing the jammer and then redirecting the vehicles away from the roads the attacker is using. This approach was simulated using real-life maps and specialized network environments. Additionally, the performance of the new approach was evaluated using different metrics. These evaluation metrics include (1) the estimated position of the jammer, (2) the handling of the jammer by announcing its location to normal vehicles (3) the avoidance of the jammed routes by increasing their weight, which forces the cars to reroute and evade the jamming area. The high localization accuracy, measured by the Euclidean distance, and the successful communication of the attacker’s position and its avoidance have highly increased the packet delivery ratio (PDR) and the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). This was noticed significantly before and after avoiding the jamming area when for example, the PDR increased from 0% to 100% before and after bypassing the jammer’s routes.