Abstract
Time Synchronized Channel Hopping (TSCH) is a key feature in existing industrial Internet of Things wireless standards such as WirelessHART to achieve reliable and real-time communication. However, the current TSCH strategy adopted in WirelessHART can produce strong repetitive channel usage, making it vulnerable to channel cracking and jamming attacks. Developing a jamming-resilient channel hopping strategy for WirelessHART networks poses significant challenges due to the need to ensure fast channel switching (within 0.192 ms), channel synchronization between senders and receivers, and interference-free concurrent transmissions. In this paper, we present a jamming-resilient channel hopping mechanism for WirelessHART that meets these requirements. Our approach leverages multi-level randomness to reduce repetitive channel hopping patterns, thereby enhancing resistance to jamming attacks. We have implemented our approach in Contiki-NG and evaluated it through both testbed experiments and simulations in Cooja. Our results demonstrate that this new channel hopping strategy markedly reduces the effectiveness of a jammer’s ability to predict channel patterns, without increasing the channel hopping overhead compared to the current WirelessHART approach.