Timely and robust key establishment under jamming attack in critical wireless networks

Jamming attacks are security threats disrupting RF communications in wireless networks. Traditionally, spread spectrum has been proposed as a countermeasure. However, spread spectrum requires secure pre-key establishment before data transmission, with considerable time investment and thus limited functionality. This paper proposes a Frequency Quorum Rendezvous (FQR) scheme. In FQR, nodes hop over random frequencies during the key establishment phase, thus preventing jamming. By exploiting quorum time bounded rendezvous, nodes “meet” to exchange secure keys within the time constraints posed by the application (for example, merger of two teams in time to fight back an imminent enemy attack). We validate the proposed scheme via extensive simulations and show its robustness and efficiency under varying number of available frequencies and varying probability of jamming attacks.