Using A Directional Antenna To Achieve Quality Transmission On A Wireless Ad Hoc Network Under Jamming Attacks

Wireless ad hoc networks are constructed in such a way that the total available bandwidth is shared among all the transmitting work stations at any given time. As a result of this, it is very easy for an adversary to launch jamming attacks, which consequently leads to a denial of service either in reception or transmission. Jamming attacks target the network service availability either by blocking communication links between network devices or by blocking a single device from sending data hence making the instance of communication worthless.In this survey, we demonstrate the negative effects of jamming signals on the quality of transmission by using the metrics of throughput and bit error rate (BER) between two wireless ad hoc nodes, which are communicating using Omni-directional antennas-Omni-directional Reception Omni-directional Transmission (OROT). We design an OROT network and create two scenarios in this project; OROT without jammer to act as a baseline topology and OROT with jammer for comparison. We then configure and run simulations using OPNET Modeler10.5for each of the two scenarios and analyse the results. Through the results obtained, we prove beyond reasonable doubt that jamming signals significantly reduce the quality of transmission on a wireless ad hoc network as shown by drastic drop in throughput.Finally, we design another project, DROT Network in which we replace Omni-directional antenna with a directional antenna at the receiver node-Directional Reception Omni-directional Transmission (DROT). We also create two scenarios for this project as before; DROT without jammer and DROT with jammer and then configure and run simulations for each scenario. Through the results obtained, it is confirmed that with a directional antenna it is possible to achieve a high quality transmission of nearly95%under jamming attacks.