Wireless Network Behaviour during Jamming Attacks: Simulation using OPNET

Abstract

Jamming-style attacks can be launched easily on wireless networks because they are built upon a shared medium. These attacks can be performed by emitting radio frequency signals. These signals do not follow an underlying MAC protocol and can highly interfere with the normal operation of wireless networks. Jamming attacks represent the denial of service attack in wireless networks. In this paper, we have used OPNET Modeler to perform jamming attacks to investigate wireless network behavior. The results showed that the investigated jamming attacks can cause severe performance degradation into wireless networks and jamming attack is successfully avoided by using channel switching technique.