Mitigating Constant Jamming in Cognitive Radio Networks Using Hybrid FEC Code

The task of detecting and mitigating Cognitive Radios (CRs) operating as constant jammers in a Cognitive Radio network (CRN) can be very daunting. The CR constant jammers prey on the adaptable functionalities of CRN so as to cause serious denial of service to the users of the network. In addition, these jammers are capable of introducing value faults in pathological cases as a result of being able to manipulate transmitted data. In previous research, we have investigated the performance of CRNs operating in the presence of jamming attacks that are capable of introducing value faults. The results obtained show that CR constant jammers are very effective in their operations and they are capable of bringing down the entire CRN when their jamming rate is just about 30%. In this paper, we show that none of the existing anti-jamming solutions are able to mitigate CR jammers that are capable of manipulating communicated data. As a result, we propose a hybrid forward error correction (FEC) code that incorporates data integrity checking into an efficient forward error correction mechanism. The approach uses data redundancy to remove the need for retransmission of lost or detected manipulated data caused by jamming attacks by exploring the recovery block component of the proposed solution. We present the algorithm for our proposed solution and evaluate its performance through simulation. The result of our analysis using suitable performance metrics shows that the solution is very efficient and robust against the different rates of jamming perpetrated by constant jammers.