JCSE, vol. 7, no. 3, pp.187-197, 2013

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5626/JCSE.2013.7.3.187

A Survey of Security Mechanisms with Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum Signals

Taeho Kang, Xiang Li, Chansu Yu, Jong Kim
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Korea / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA / (1)Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA (2)Division of IT Convergence Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Korea / Division of IT Convergence Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Korea

Abstract: Security has long been a challenging problem in wireless networks, mainly due to its broadcast nature of communication. This opens up simple yet effective measures to thwart useful communications between legitimate radios. Spread spec- trum technologies, such as direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS), have been developed as effective countermeasures against, for example, jamming attacks. This paper surveys previous research on securing a DSSS channel even further, using physical layer attributes?keyless DSSS mechanisms, and watermarked DSSS (WDSSS) schemes. The former has been motivated by the fact that it is still an open question to establish and share the secret spread sequence between the transmitter and the receiver without being noticed by adversaries. The basic idea of the latter is to exploit the redundancy inherent in DSSS’s spreading process to embed watermark information. It can be considered a counter measure (authen- tication) for an intelligent attacker who obtains the spread sequence to generate fake messages. This paper also presents and evaluates an adaptive DSSS scheme that takes both jam resistance and communic

Keyword: Security and privacy; Hardware-dependent software and interfaces; Smart-environment computing

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