article

Understanding and mitigating the impact of RF interference on 802.11 networks

Authors:

Ramakrishna Gummadi,

David Wetherall,

Ben Greenstein,

Srinivasan SeshanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Volume 37, Issue 4

Pages 385 - 396

https://doi.org/10.1145/1282427.1282424

Published: 27 August 2007 Publication History

Abstract

We study the impact on 802.11 networks of RF interference from devices such as Zigbee and cordless phones that increasingly crowd the 2.4GHz ISM band, and from devices such as wireless camera jammers and non-compliant 802.11 devices that seek to disrupt 802.11 operation. Our experiments show that commodity 802.11 equipment is surprisingly vulnerable to certain patterns of weak or narrow-band interference. This enables us to disrupt a link with an interfering signal whose power is 1000 times weaker than the victim's 802.11 signals, or to shut down a multiple AP, multiple channel managed network at a location with a single radio interferer. We identify several factors that lead to these vulnerabilities, ranging from MAC layer driver implementation strategies to PHY layer radio frequency implementation strategies. Our results further show that these factors are not overcome by simply changing 802.11 operational parameters (such as CCA threshold, rate and packet size) with the exception of frequency shifts. This leads us to explore rapid channel hopping as a strategy to withstand RF interference. We prototype a channel hopping design using PRISM NICs, and find that it can sustain throughput at levels of RF interference well above that needed to disrupt unmodified links, and at a reasonable cost in terms of switching overheads.

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Cited By

Zhu YLi YDuan Z(2024)Adaptive Whitening and Feature Gradient Smoothing-Based Anti-Sample Attack Method for Modulated Signals in Frequency-Hopping CommunicationElectronics10.3390/electronics1309178413:9(1784)Online publication date: 5-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13091784
Mishra LBenouadah SAlghazo JKaabouch N(2024)Interference Effects on Bandwidth Availability for UAV Communications2024 Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS)10.1109/ICNS60906.2024.10550835(1-6)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNS60906.2024.10550835
Al-Husseini ZChaiel HMeddeb AFakhfakh A(2024)A detailed review of wireless sensor network, jammer, the types, location, detection and countermeasures of jammersService Oriented Computing and Applications10.1007/s11761-024-00396-w18:3(225-247)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11761-024-00396-w
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Understanding and mitigating the impact of RF interference on 802.11 networks
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Measurement
    2. Metrics
2. Networks
  1. Network architectures

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review

ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review Volume 37, Issue 4

October 2007

420 pages

ISSN:0146-4833

DOI:10.1145/1282427

Issue’s Table of Contents

SIGCOMM '07: Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications
August 2007
432 pages
ISBN:9781595937131
DOI:10.1145/1282380
General Chairs:
Jun Murai
Keio University, Japan
,
Kenjiro Cho
IIJ, Japan

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 August 2007

Published in SIGCOMM-CCR Volume 37, Issue 4

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Cited By

Zhu YLi YDuan Z(2024)Adaptive Whitening and Feature Gradient Smoothing-Based Anti-Sample Attack Method for Modulated Signals in Frequency-Hopping CommunicationElectronics10.3390/electronics1309178413:9(1784)Online publication date: 5-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13091784
Mishra LBenouadah SAlghazo JKaabouch N(2024)Interference Effects on Bandwidth Availability for UAV Communications2024 Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS)10.1109/ICNS60906.2024.10550835(1-6)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNS60906.2024.10550835
Al-Husseini ZChaiel HMeddeb AFakhfakh A(2024)A detailed review of wireless sensor network, jammer, the types, location, detection and countermeasures of jammersService Oriented Computing and Applications10.1007/s11761-024-00396-w18:3(225-247)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11761-024-00396-w
Huang YChin K(2023)A Three-Tier Deep Learning-Based Channel Access Method for WiFi NetworksIEEE Transactions on Machine Learning in Communications and Networking10.1109/TMLCN.2023.32880901(90-106)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMLCN.2023.3288090
Huang YChin K(2023)A Hierarchical Deep Learning Approach for Optimizing CCA Threshold and Transmit Power in Wi-Fi NetworksIEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking10.1109/TCCN.2023.32829849:5(1296-1307)Online publication date: Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCCN.2023.3282984
Zhang ZKrunz M(2023)Detection and Classification of Smart Jamming in Wi-Fi Networks Using Machine LearningMILCOM 2023 - 2023 IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM)10.1109/MILCOM58377.2023.10356126(919-924)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/MILCOM58377.2023.10356126
Kohler SBirnbach SBaker RMartinovic I(2022)On the Security of the Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging Communication2022 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm)10.1109/SmartGridComm52983.2022.9961000(393-398)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SmartGridComm52983.2022.9961000
Shudrenko YKuladinithi KTimm-Giel A(2022)Comparison of Contention-Based vs Timeslotted Channel Hopping Medium Access in Wireless Sensor Networks under Noisy Environment2022 32nd International Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ITNAC)10.1109/ITNAC55475.2022.9998416(7-12)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ITNAC55475.2022.9998416
Li WChen TOu ZWen XXu ZXu C(2022)RetroFlex: enabling intuitive human–robot collaboration with flexible retroreflective tagsCCF Transactions on Pervasive Computing and Interaction10.1007/s42486-022-00120-74:4(437-451)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42486-022-00120-7
Ivanov AStoynov VAngelov KStefanov RAtamyan DTonchev KPoulkov V(2020)Interference Mapping in 3D for High-Density Indoor IoT DeploymentsWireless Sensor Networks - Design, Deployment and Applications [Working Title]10.5772/intechopen.93581Online publication date: 10-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93581
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