An eavesdropping and jamming dilemma with sophisticated players

Abstract

Wireless networks are susceptible to malicious attacks, especially those involving eavesdropping and jamming. In this paper, we consider a communication scenario involving a transmitter who wishes to communicate secretly and reliably with a receiver, while an adversary wants to obstruct this communication by means of either eavesdropping or jamming. The transmitter as well as the adversary wants to achieve its own goal in a manner that is as unpredictable as possible to its rival. We model this problem by a non-zero sum game. The expected throughput that is delivered secretly and non-jammed to the receiver is considered as the metric that reflects communication secrecy and reliability. The entropy of the player’s strategies is considered as the metric to reflect the player’s unpredictability. The equilibrium is found in closed form, and parameters of the transmitter’s utility supporting both goals are optimized via a proportional fairness approach.

Keywords

• Eavesdropping
• Jamming
• Entropy
• Nash equilibrium