Energy efficient outsider attacks on IEEE 802.15.4 beacon enabled wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard have wide applications in office and industrial automation. Most of these networks utilize beacon enabled mode of operation due to the availability of sleep states which can extend the battery life. Wireless sensor nodes have little protection against radio interference and hence very susceptible to jamming. The situation becomes worse if energy-efficient jamming can be achieved by exploiting knowledge of the data link layer. While, encryption might help prevent the jammer from taking actions based on the content of the packets, the arrangement of the packets induced by the nature of the protocol can be exploited. By analyzing the packet interarrival times and lengths of packets, energy-efficient jamming can be performed. In this paper, we propose three jamming attacks based on learning the superframe structure and beacon interval in these networks. The algorithms are described in detail, simulated and the effectiveness and efficiency of the attacks are examined. The result of this paper provides new insights into the superframe structure and security considerations of beacon enabled mode of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol.