Defending jamming attacks in wireless sensor networks using stackelberg monitoring strategies

Due to their unattended and broadcast nature wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are vulnerable to various types of attacks, among which a particularly harmful form of attack, the jamming attack. Game theory provides robust tools to model and investigate such attacks. In this paper, we study a class of such jamming games played at the physical layer among a set of monitor nodes and the jammer. We formulate the problem using a Bayesian Stackelberg game. The derived Stackelberg equilibrium strategies define the expected performance of the defender under jamming attacks, and motivate a security-aware protocol design for this type of wireless networks. Different network scenarios are studied to illustrate that the proposed game theoretic approach significantly reduces the ability of the attacker to jam the network.