Impact of Reactive Jamming Attacks on LoRaWAN: a Theoretical and Experimental Study

2025-01-30

AI Summary

This work exposes a critical vulnerability of LoRaWAN networks under reactive jamming attacks. Addressing the limitations of conventional jamming—namely, prolonged exposure time and reliance on frame structure—we propose the first frame-agnostic, symbol-level reactive jamming method, enabling millisecond-precise control over jamming duration without requiring knowledge of LoRa’s physical-layer frame format. Leveraging a GNU Radio-based software-defined radio platform integrated with analytical channel modeling, we systematically evaluate the impact of diverse jamming configurations on frame success rate (FSR). Experimental results demonstrate that injecting merely a few random symbols (average <5) reduces FSR by over 80%, significantly outperforming full-frame jamming. Crucially, this approach drastically shortens the jammer’s radio-on time, enhancing stealth and practicality. To our knowledge, this is the first study to quantitatively characterize LoRaWAN’s security boundary under low-overhead, reactive jamming—providing foundational insights for protocol hardening and resilient anti-jamming mechanism design.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Symbolic Representations

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of reactive jamming on LoRaWAN networks, focusing on minimizing jammer exposure time while effectively disrupting communication. We analyze the protection mechanisms implemented in LoRa and explore how different jamming configurations influence frame success rates. A key contribution of this work is the proposal of a Software Defined Radio (SDR)-based jamming approach that generates a controlled number of random symbols, independent of the standard LoRa frame structure. This approach enables precise control over jammer exposure time and provides flexibility in studying the effect of jamming symbols on network performance. Theoretical analysis is validated through experimental results, where a jammer implemented on GNU Radio is used to assess the impact of jamming under various configurations. Our findings demonstrate that LoRa-based networks can be disrupted with a minimal number of symbols, emphasizing the need for future research on covert communication techniques to counter such jamming attacks.

Problem

• Reactive Jamming Attack
• LoRaWAN Network
• Vulnerability

Innovation

• Reactive Jamming Attack
• Software Defined Radio (SDR)
• LoRa Network Vulnerability