Performance analysis of frequency-hopping ad hoc networks with random dwell-time under follower jamming

A common jamming strategy against frequency-hopping (FH) radio networks is to adopt follower jamming. A possible counteraction of the radio network to aggravate for the jammer is to utilize a pseudo-random dwell-time in the FH process. The paper provides a method to analyze the performance of a frequency-hopping ad hoc network under follower jamming, and a jamming criterion for FH with a pseudo-random dwell-time is derived. For the assessment a network scenario is utilized. When links are jammed, even if the network still is connected, the capacity of the network is affected. Also, at low hop rates when a large part of the links is jammed, many of the network nodes can communicate with each other. This is because a number of strong links exist with a power advantage over the jammer. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that a considerably lower average hop rate can be used when the network is equipped with a FH radio with a pseudo-random dwell-time instead of a fixed dwell-time.