DISTRIBUTED JAMMER NETWORK: IMPACT AND CHARACTERIZATION
Nihal Ahmed and Hong Huang
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM, USA
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we introduce a new denial-of-service attack
on wireless networks: low-power, distributed jamming
network (DJN). DJN is composed of large number of low-
power jamming devices, which are deployed in proximity
to the target devices. DJN can cause significant damage to
target network performance with high energy efficiency. In
the paper, we provide a characterization of DJN,
demonstrate the effectiveness of DJN and provide a study
on the impact of various DJN parameters on jamming
effectiveness. 1
I. INTRODUCTION
Distributed jamming is realized by deploying a distributed
jammer network (DJN), which is composed of a large
number of tiny, low-power jammers, which are distributed
inside a target network and emit radio energy to disrupt its
communications. DJN is motivated by recent advancement
in the miniaturization of radios [1][2], see Figure 1.
Today’s MEMS and NANO technology makes it possible
to make jammers sufficiently small that a DJN can take the
form of a dust suspending in the air, forming a so-called
“Jamming Dust,” in comparison with “Smart Dust”[3].
Miniaturization of jammers should be less challenging
than that of radio transceivers since jammers just emit
noise signal without requiring complex modulation,
filtering and other signal processing functions. Therefore,
new miniature devices such as nanotube radio [2] may find
their first application in jamming dust.
1.1 Applications of DJN
There can be many military/security applications for DJN.
For example, DJN can be deployed to form a jamming
dust inside a terrorist-occupied building to disable the
wireless communications capability of the enemy inside.
DJN can also be deployed in front of moving troops to
disrupt radio-triggered improvised explosive devices (IED)
without depriving troops’ own communications capability
because of the low power DJN uses. Self-interference
caused by jammers has posed difficult problems in the
©2009 IEEE
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second Iraq war [6]. In general, future warfare will
increasingly depend on radio signal for command and
control, weapons guidance, GPS navigation, etc. DJN can
play an important role in future net-centric warfare.
Courtesy Zettl Research Group, LBNL and UCB
Figure 1: Evolution of radio technology.
DJN can have many civilian usages as well. Although
owning or using jammers is illegal in USA, and is
tantamount to property theft (the property being the
government owned frequency); it is legal and put into
sensible use in some other countries [4]. For example, in
France, jammers are used in restaurants or theaters to
silence obnoxious cell phone users. In Italy, jammers are
used in exam rooms to frustrate potential cheaters. In
Mexico, jammers are deployed in churches to prevent
disruption of sacred services. In such cases, deploying a
low-power DJN instead of high-power ones is clearly
preferable due to health concerns. In fact in today’s world
of wireless device proliferation (cell phone, WiFi, WiMax,
and Bloetooth devices, wireless game console, sensor
networks, etc.), DJN can spontaneously form in the
crowded ISM bands since devices speaking different MAC
protocols are essentially jammers to one another within the
same frequency band. This kind of jamming may already
become a reality as indicated by the reported incident of
possible Xbox game console interfering with WiFi [5].
1.2 Uniqueness and advantages of DJN
DJN is different from traditional jammers [13] used by the
military, which are typically located outside the target
network and cause inference by beaming high-power radio
signal over long distance using directional antenna. DJN is
also different from the kind of in-network jamming studied
recently (summarized in Section 6), which uses jammers
of similar size as target network devices whereas DJN can
use much smaller, lower-power devices than target
network nodes. More importantly, existing works on
jamming are mostly from the perspective of individual
jammers. DARPA realized the importance of DJN in
future battlefields and founded the WolfPack program [8],
which is essentially a high-power, large-node version of
DJN but of which not much technical detail is available in
the public. Despite DJN’s importance, not much work on
the subject has emerged in the research community. This
paper intends to advocate studying jamming from a
network perspective, rather than from the perspective of
individual jammers. That is, we ask the question: What is
the impact of a network of jammers. A large number of
jammers have a network effect which can not be fully
accounted by that of individual jammers. The network
approach is conducive to broaden the problem scope
considerably and increases the likelihood of obtaining
important/interesting results.
Compared with traditional jammers DJN have the
following advantages: First, DJN is robust because it is
composed of a large number of devices with ample
redundancy. Second, DJN nodes emit low power, which is
advantageous because of health, self-interference
concerns. Third, DJN is hard to detect because of nodes’
small size (the naked eye can not even see a nanotube
radio) and low power emission. Forth, DJN provides
extended coverage with high energy efficiency. In Section
4, we will show that using the same total amount of power,
a DJN of n nodes covers an effective area n1-2/α times
larger than that of a single jammer, where α is the path loss
exponent with a typical value of 4. So the typical power
efficiency gain of DJN is n1/2, which is unbounded as n
goes to infinity.
1.3 Contribution and organization of the paper
The contributions of the paper are the following: 1) We
identify an effective jamming approach: DJN consisting of
large number of low-power jammers that have important
military and civilian applications. 2) We provide temporal
and spatial characterization of DJN, introduce a new
jamming mechanism: reactive-adaptive jamming, and
provide a scaling relationship of DJN (Section II). 3)
Using simulation, we investigate the impact of DJN
parameters such as number of jammers, DJN topology, and
node mobility on DJN effectiveness (Section III). We
report related previous work in Section IV and conclude in
section V.
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II. DJN CHARACTERIZATION, JAMMING
MECHANISM, AND SCALING BEHAVIOR
In this section we describe characterization, jamming
mechanism and scaling behavior of DJN. First, we
describe our assumptions. We assume that radio antenna of
both target network and DJN are omnidirectional. We
assume operation under adversarial conditions where no
knowledge about the target network device type and
network protocols is available, and where the enemy
device type or the enemy identity itself is not known a
priori, e.g., in terrorist attacks. In addition, target network
packets can be encrypted to reveal little useful control
information. Thus methods [9][10][11] that take advantage
of the knowledge about network protocols are not
applicable here.
2.1 DJN characterization
DJN is described by its temporal and spatial
characteristics. Temporal characteristics relate to questions
such as: When and how long a jammer is active? Spatial
characteristics relate to questions such as: how densely and
with what topology the DJN is deployed? For temporal
characterization, we can use jamming intensity and
duration. Jamming intensity (I) is defined as the percentage
of time a jammer is active. Jamming period (P) is defined
as how long a jammer stays active once activated. Using
these parameters, we can classify jammers as follows [12]:
A constant jammer has 100% intensity. A periodic jammer
has fixed intensity and period. A random jammer has
random intensity or period. A reactive jammer has
intensity or jamming period that adapts to the channel state
it observes.
For spatial characterization of DJN, we can use node
density and network topology. Node density is defined as
the number of jammers per unit area. DJN topology is
simply the network topology of DJN, which can be
structured or random. For structured DJN topologies, a
natural way to categorize them is according to how they
cut across the target network, since the purpose of DJN is
to disconnect, or cut, the target network. Some elementary
examples of cuts are shown in Figure 2, and are described
as follows. A line cut is composed of jammers arranged in
a line so as to cut the target network in half. A parallel cut
is composed of two or more line cuts parallel to each other
so as to cut the target network multiple times in the same
direction. A cross cut is composed of two parallel cuts that
are perpendicular to each other so as to cut the target
network in orthogonal directions. In contrast, a random
topology is where jammers are deployed randomly in
space.
 military applications, I = 30% is considered adequate [13].
Jammer parameter selections, of course, should depend on
the particular application in question, and here we assume
we can make appropriate selections. If target network does
not use error-correcting code, RAJ jams for one slot time,
ignores the ensuing period of busy channel (letting the
current damaged packet to finish), and begins to jam the
channel again when the channel returns busy after an idle
(a) (b) period (e.g., inter-frame time in IEEE802.11). Such
jamming can achieve very high jamming gain, i.e.,
expending a small amount of jamming energy to waste a
large amount of target network transmission energy.

2.3 DJN scaling behavior

The benefit of DJN will become evident from the
following scaling analysis. Let us consider n jammers,
each with power level of Pn. We impose the constraint of
(c) (d)
total power being P, so nPn = P. First, we introduce the
concept of jamming coverage area:
Figure 2. DJN topologies: line cut (a), parallel cut (b), cross cut
(c), random (d).
Definition 1. The jamming coverage area of a jammer is
defined as the area around the jammer where the received
2.2 DJN jamming mechanism
jamming power exceeds the threshold Pj,t, above which the
In this paper, we consider DJN composed of reactive
jammer causes significant interference with target
jammers, which are among the most effective jamming
devices 2 . The jamming coverage area of DJN is defined as
methods [12]. However, we propose a variant of reactive
all the area in the network where the received jamming
jammers called reactive-adaptive jammer (RAJ). RAJ is
power exceeds the threshold Pj,t.
reactive in the usual sense but it also adapts to target
network packet size, the detail of which is given below. A
Using standard radio path loss model with proper selection
RAJ senses a wide frequency range and jams the channel
of units so that the gain factor is 1, we can find the
on which it detects radio activity. Recent advancement in
jamming coverage area of a jammer as a ball with the
software defined radio and UWB radio provides
radius rn given by:
technology to make wideband sensing possible. The 1
temporal characteristics of a RAJ are its period P and Pn ⎛ Pn ⎞α
intensity I. Specifically, after sensing a busy channel, a = P or r = ⎜ ⎟
rnα
j ,t n
⎜ Pj ,t ⎟
jammer becomes active in I percentage of time in a period ⎝ ⎠
of P seconds after which the jammer restarts sensing again.
So the jamming coverage area of DJN is given by
Next we describe the choice of P and I in a RAJ. Since the
elementary transmission unit in a typical radio is its slot 2
time, P is chosen to be a slot time in target network, which ⎛ P ⎞α
is roughly 20/30 μs in IEEE 802.11/802.15 radios. Since An = po nπ rn2 = po nπ ⎜ n ⎟
⎜ Pj ,t ⎟
jamming stops once the channel is sensed to be idle and ⎝ ⎠
2 2
the sensing is performed at slot intervals, a RAJ
⎛ P ⎞α 1−
2 ⎛
P ⎞α
automatically adapts to target network packet size: large = po nπ ⎜ ⎟ = po n α π ⎜ ⎟
target network packet size causes RAJ jamming for a ⎜ nPj ,t ⎟ ⎜ Pj ,t ⎟
⎝ ⎠ ⎝ ⎠
longer duration whereas small target network packet size
causes RAJ jamming for a shorter duration, but both with In the above, po is the probability that individual jamming
constant intensity I. I is selected to be no less than the areas do not overlap. In the last term above, P/Pj,t is
redundancy provided by the target network error- constant, so we immediately have the following:
correcting code; so that the intensity of jamming is just
enough to ensure that every target network packet is 2
Pj,t depends on the target devices’ deployment and noise tolerance and is
destroyed without wasting unnecessary energy. In typical independent of n.

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Proposition 1. Under the total power consumption
constraint, the jamming coverage area of DJN with n
jammers, An, scales as n1-2/α.
• When α > 2, An strictly increases with n.
• When α < 2, An strictly decreases with n
• When α = 2, An is invariant of n.
is the following. The target network has 100 nodes
uniformly randomly deployed in an area of 1500 by 1500
meters, with half of the nodes having CBR UDP sessions
with the other half of the nodes. All simulations are
repeated 10 times and the average results are recorded. The
MAC protocol used is IEEE802.11, and the routing
protocol used is AODV.

The path loss exponent α ranges from 2 (light of sight

propagation in vacuum) to 6 (complex urban
environments). In the practical case where α > 2, we see
the scaling behavior (n1-2/α), favoring a large number of
jammers with low power level. Theoretically, with finite
total power, the jamming coverage area An goes to infinite
as n goes to infinite, as mentioned in the introduction
section. Practically, of course, that is not going to happen
because of the impracticality of making infinitely small
devices.

Table 1. Summary of simulation results

DJN parameters Jamming Performance
Num. of Jammers Increases with number of jammers,
with total jamming power fixed
DJN Topology Random topology is as good as any
regular topologies
Node Mobility Maximizes when target node and
jammer speeds are matched Figure 3. Throughput reduction ratio as a function of number of
jammers

III. SIMULATION STUDY

In the following, we provide simulation results, which

show how the parameters of DJN affect its effectiveness.
Since the temporal characteristics relate mostly to
individual jammer behavior that has accumulated much
previous research results, we focus on spatial characters
that relate to network-wide properties: the number of
jammers in DJN which represents jammer density with
fixed area, network topology of DJN, and the mobility of
DJN that is relevant to mobile ad hoc networks. The
principal metrics of DJN effectiveness are the throughput
reduction ratio and end-to-end delay addition ratio defined
as below:

Average throughput with DJN Figure 4. End-to-end delay addition ratio as a function of
Throughput redution ratio =
Average throughput without DJN number of jammers

Average delay with DJN 3.1 Impact of the number of jammers in DJN
End-to-end delay addition ratio = We start by uniformly randomly deploying 2 jammers with
Average delay without DJN
the same transmitting power as the target device (15 dbm).
Then we increase the number of jammers while reducing
Our simulation is performed using Qualnet [7]. Our main
jamming power, holding the total power consumed by the
findings are listed in Table 1. The setup of the simulation
jammers constant. From Figure 3, we can see at 20

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jammers, the throughput reduction ratio drops
precipitously. Given that the total power consumption is
constant, the benefit of using a large number of low-power
jammers (i.e., DJN) is evident. The trend is similar for
end-to-end delay, but without such dramatic changes, see
Figure 4.
other; a cross cut composed of two line cuts perpendicular
to each other, and a random topology. All the cuts extend
to the boundaries of the network. From simulation results
shown in Figure 5 and 6, random topology is as effective
in jamming performance as structured topologies (various
cuts). Therefore there is no need for elaborate topology
arrangement for DJN to be effective.

Figure 5. Throughput reduction ratio as a function of DJN Figure 7. Throughput reduction ratio as a function of target
topology node and DJN mobility

Figure 6. End-to-end delay addition ratio as a function of DJN Figure 8. End-to-end delay addition ratio as a function of target
topology node and DJN mobility

3.2 Impact of DJN topology 3.3 Impact of mobility

We deploy eight jammers in four topologies: a line cut; a Different from previous settings where the target and DJN
parallel cut composed of two line cuts parallel to each nodes are fixed, we make nodes move using the random

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waypoint mobility model. We fix the average speed of
target network to be 10 m/s, and change the average speed
of DJN nodes from 5, 10, 20, to 40 m/s, creating four
scenarios: Js < Ns, Js = Ns, Js > Ns, Js >> Ns, where Js
and Ns indicate the average speeds of DJN nodes and
target nodes, respectively. From simulation results shown
in Figure 7 and 8, DJN is most effective with its speed
matched to that of the target network, and big mismatch in
speed (e.g., Js >> Ns) causes degradation in jamming
performance.
IV. RELATED PREVIOUS WORK
Much previous work on jamming focuses on the physical
layer [13]. Recently, papers on jamming in wireless
networks, especially wireless sensor network due to its
vulnerability from field deployment, began to appear [14].
A game-theoretical analysis of a transmitter and a jammer
transmitting to the same receiver was provided in [15].
Denial of service or jamming at MAC layer was studied in
[9][10]. Jamming detecting and mapping in wireless
sensor networks was studied in [16][17]. Error correction
codes were proposed as counter-measure to jamming in
[18]. Four different jamming attack models (constant,
deceptive, random, reactive jammers) and detection
methods (using signal strength, carrier sensing time and
packet delivery ratio) were presented in [12]. Two
counter-measures (channel surfing and spatial retreats)
were proposed in [19]. An optimization formulation and a
heuristic for jamming and defense strategies were
presented in [20]. A MAC-layer protocol DEEJAM was
proposed to defeat four kinds of jamming (interrupt,
activity, scan and pulse) in [21]. In [22] worm-hole among
sensor nodes was used to send out attack notification. A
tree keying scheme in CDMA systems was proposed to
combat jamming in broadcast wireless networks [23].
Jamming in IEEE 802.11 networks was studied in [11].
The fundamental difference between our work and existing
work is that we consider the problem from the perspective
of a network of jammers, instead of that of individual
jammers as typical with previous work.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper we have introduced an effective method of
jamming: DJN. We provided characterization and scaling
behavior of DJN, and studied the impact of DJN
parameters on jamming effectiveness. We believe
approaching the problem of jamming in wireless networks
from a network perspective can broaden the research scope
significantly and can bring out some interesting results
otherwise unattainable by focusing on individual jammers.
As for future work, we think the interplay between DJN
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and target networks makes for intriguing problems, which
cut across network layers: device placement, topology
control, power control, medium access, routing, and data
transport. Investigating those problems can result in deeper
understanding of not only DJN but also wireless networks
in general. We believe a lot more interesting results can be
obtained from this approach and are currently working in
this direction.
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