2010 International Conference on Computer Application and System Modeling (ICCASM 2010)
Mobile Jamming Attack in Clustering Wireless Sensor Network
Liu Zhiping
Henan Polytechnic University
Jiaozuo City, China
liuzhiping@hpu.edu.cn
Abstract—Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks are recognized as a
biggest threats due to the resources constrained proterty in
wireless sensor networks(WSN).Especially, using some mobile
nodes , we can attack the cluster heads in clustering netwrok,
this jamming can cause a serious damage in perfomance of
WSNs. Because the cluster head collect and fuse the data from
all nodes in cluter, and forward to the base station. It is hard to
provide enough protection against this type of attack. We
conducted a simulation to investigate the impat of the mobile
jamming in cluster WSNs. The simulation results demonstrate
that the mobile jamming we prosoed is more devastating than
traditional jamming attacks.
Keywords-wireless sensor networ,mobile jamming; cluster
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless sensor networks receive more and more
attention because of their wide application in military as well
as in living life[1]. The most esentional applications are
monitor service systems, such as military monitor system or
security system[2]. Since the WSN are composed of
numerous economical but resource constrained sensor nodes,
securing sensor network is a challenging task. Many
researchers had proposed several kinds of attacks to cause
concerns in security issue. The fundamental characteristic of
wireless networks that renders then vulnerable to attacks is
the broadcast nature of their mudium. The Denial-of-Service
attacks, especially the energy efficient DoS attacks have
most devastating influence among this attacks. The reason is
that the sensor node has limited power resource and it will
fail to operate when energy exhausted.
The jamming attacks is quite simple. It can be excuted in
link layer or in physical layer. In link layer, the jamming
attack can disrupt the communication between sensor nodes
around the jammer. Beside, this attack is particularly
effective since (1) no special hardware is needed; (2) it can
be implemented by listening to the open mediun and
breadcasting a simply frequency signal. Although the
jammer are deployed randomly, the damage on the network
is still makedly. Up to now, several measures have ben
proposed to defense against the jamming attacks[8].
In this paper, we present a mobile jamming attack in
clustering wireless sensor network. Clustering network is an
important framework, because it adopts an application-
special protocol architecture. Here, we call a jammer whith
mobility as a mobile jammer, which is placed randomly.
978-1-4244-7237-6/$26.00 C 2010 IEEE
Li Hui
Henan Polytechnic University
Jiaozuo City, China
li20022004@hpu.edu.cn
The objective of the jammer is to find the cluster head, near
to cluster head, and currupt transmissions of the cluster head
by causing packet collision. Because cluster head play an
important role, it collects and fuses data from the legitimate
nods in cluster and tranform to the BS. An advantage of our
attack is that the base station cann’t receive message form
the network almostly.
II. RELATED WORK
In order to cope with the threat of mobile jamming
attack, it is important to understand the charactristics of
clustering wireless sensor network. Whether wireless sensor
network adopt the distributed clustering protocol or the
centralized clustering protocol, LEACH 【 3 】 is the first one
WSN clustering routing protocols, which was designed by
Heinzelman. soon after, LEACH-C 【 4 】 、 EEUC[5] 、
EECS[6]、HEED[7] and other protocols are advanced. The
clustering sensor network have some characters. First,
networking process is divided into two stages, cluster
formation and steady-state phase. Second, once the cluster
heads were elected, the cluster head nodes must let all the
other nodes in the network know that who is on the role for
the current round. Adopting LEACH, each cluster head
node broadcasts an advertisement message using a
nonersistent carrier-sense multiple access MAC protocl[].
This message is a small message containing the node’s ID.
Each non-cluster head node determines its cluster for this
round by choosing the cluster head that requrirs the
minimum communication energy, based on the received
signal strengh of the advertisement from each cluster head.
Adopting LEACH-C, the cluster head nodes were chosen by
base station based on its current location and energy level of
each nodes. Once the cluster heads and associated clusters
are found, the RS broadcasts a message that contains the
cluster head ID for each node. Last , in steady-state phase,
the leach and leach-c have the same steady-state protocol.
The steady-state operation is broken into frames, where
nodes send their data to the cluster head at most once per
frame during their allocated transmission slot. Once the
cluster head receives all the data, it performs data
aggregation to enchance the common signal and reduce the
uncorrelated noise among the siganls.
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III. MOBILE JAMMING ATTACK

In this section, we present our algorithm of mobile
jamming attack. Which is divided into three parts, detecting
the cluster head node; excuting mobile algorithm;
processing jamming. θ

A. Finding the Cluster Head Node

First, a mobile jammer has the mobility, in figure 1, a
mobile jammer is deployed into the WSN. It keeps listening,
because the clustering sensor network have the characters
that once the cluster head nodes were chosen whether the
network adopt the centralized or distributed algorithm, there
existed a broadcasting message, which includes the ID of the
cluster head nodes. The mobile jammer can estimate which
cluster head node is nearly based on the received signal
strength(RSS). One of the simplest approaches that have
been used for estimation of distances between nodes.
Figure 1. schematic diagram of mobile interference
B. Excuting Mobiling Algorithm
A mobile jammer is deployed into the WSN is randomly,
through the first step, the mobile jammer can estimate the
nearest cluster head node, how to move to the cluster head
node is important. Although the mobile jammer know the
location of the cluster head node, but the initializtion of
mobile jammer is unditaminate, so how to determine the
mobile node’s current location information is more important.
When the environment and the node communication range is
large enough (100 m level), you can assume that the mobile
node(decimeters Or centimeter-level) for a particle in a two-
dimensional plane, exercise in two-dimensional plane
rectangular coordinate system. For motion analysis.
Trajectory projected by the absolute coordinate system,
usually X-axis pointing to the East, Y-axis pointing north. As
shown in Figure2. The jammer move to the cluster head node
according to a certain deflecton angle.
O (0,0)
Figure 2. The mobility of the jammer
C. Jamming Attack
After the mobile jammer moves to the cluster head
node, it excutes jamming according to send signal to the
channel when the cluster head node collect the information
from non-cluster nodes and forward to the sink node.
Because the message which the cluster head node are ready
to send is more important , it concluds amount of useful data,
if the communication between cluster head node and the
sink node is interrupted, the base station will can’t get
information form the network, and network is paralyzed. So
though the mobility of jammer, the attack is enforced on the
improtant nodes in the network, we don’t care the normal
nodes.
As the network clustering process is cyclical, the
mobile jammer compute the movement periodly.
IV. SIMULATION EVALUATION
We simply simulate a wireless sensor scenario in a
square field with a size of 100 feet x 100 feet using the NS2
【9】
as shown in figure3. In order to reflect the formance of
network topologies of [3] truly, under experimental
evironment we simulation the high-density sensor network.
The specific network enviroment is follows:
1.This is a clustering sensor network, once nodes were
depolyed, the topology will not change;
2.The mobile jammer node’s energy is 5J, the ordinary
node’s energy is 1J, the normal jammer node’s energy is 15J;
3.Agreement with LEACH;
4.Nodes are deplyed randomly in Figure 3.

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 2010 International Conference on Computer Application and System Modeling (ICCASM 2010)

AsshowninFigure5.
18000
mobile jamming
16000 normal jamming

14000

12000

数数数数数
10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
时时 (s)

Figure 3. Schematic diagram of the node distribution Figure 5. comparison the data of the BS.

In order to analysize the effect of the attack we proposed,

the normal jamming was simulated, which is a randomly
jamming, the state of jammer node alternate between sleep
and jamming, without following the current medial access
control protocols, the jammer send a strong power of
wireless signals.
A. Comparison of network lifetime
We first difine the network lifetime, wich is the time
C. Comparison of the energy consumption
The nuber of the moble jammer is decided by the number
of the cluster head nodes. The mobile jammer used the
method mentioned to find the nearest cluster nodes and to
move to the cluster head nearly, so the energy consumption
on jamming is little, the energy were consumed on
calculating an moving, we can see from the figure 6.
14

when the number of network nodes reduced to 10. We normal jammer

mobile 1
compare the network lifetime of no interference, the nomal 12
mobile 2
mobile 3
jamming and the mobile jamming. As shown in Figure4. 10 mobile 4
mobile 5
干干干干干数干干 (J)

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
时时（ s）

Figure 6. comarison of the energy consumption

.
Figure 4. comparison of the network lifetime
The network under mobile jamming has a long lifetiime,
the communication between the cluster head node and base
station were currupted, the cluster head don’t comuse energy
on send data to base station, the energy were saved.
B. Comparison the data
Mobile interference is mainly through the mobility
of the jammer, making interference mainly focused on
the attacking of the network cluster head, the
communication of the cluster head node includes the
main data, if such communication is damaged, the base
station will not receive almost any data from the network.
As shown in Figure4, Figure 5, Figure 6, mobile
jamming consumed more energy than normal jamming, but
it’s interference is better, it almost make the network useless.
V. CONCLUSION
The mobile jamming in clustering sensor network can cause
the base station receiving little data at the price of little
energy consumption, which is effective. But this jamming is
informed of network communication protocol as the
prerequisite. Under normal circumstances, especially
military network, it is diffcult to know the network
communication protocl, so excuting mobile jamming is
impossible. In the future, we focus on sutdying special

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 2010 International Conference on Computer Application and System Modeling (ICCASM 2010)
networks and mobile algorithm, by improving the algorithm
to reduce energy comsumption and increase adaptability.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by the youth foudation of henan
polytechnic university No.210-2
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