{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,22]],"date-time":"2026-01-22T22:20:28Z","timestamp":1769120428847,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":39,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2018,10,16]],"date-time":"2018-10-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1539648000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>We propose Strength of Crowd (SoC), a distributed Internet of Things (IoT) protocol that guarantees message broadcast from an initiator to all network nodes in the presence of either a reactive or a proactive jammer, that targets a variable portion of the radio spectrum. SoC exploits a simple, yet innovative and effective idea: nodes not (currently) involved in the broadcast process transmit decoy messages that cannot be distinguished (by the jammer) from the real ones. Therefore, the jammer has to implement a best-effort strategy to jam all the concurrent communications up to its frequency\/energy budget. SoC exploits the inherent parallelism that stems from the massive deployments of IoT nodes to guarantee a high number of concurrent communications, exhausting the jammer capabilities and hence leaving a subset of the communications not jammed. It is worth noting that SoC could be adopted in several wireless scenarios; however, we focus on its application to the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) domain, including IoT, Machine-to-Machine (M2M), Device-to-Device (D2D), to name a few. In this framework, we provide several contributions: firstly, we show the details of the SoC protocol, as well as its integration with the IEEE 802.15.4-2015 MAC protocol; secondly, we study the broadcast delay to deliver the message to all the nodes in the network; and finally, we run an extensive simulation and experimental campaign to test our solution. We consider the state-of-the-art OpenMote-B experimental platform, adopting the OpenWSN open-source protocol stack. Experimental results confirm the quality and viability of our solution.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s18103492","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,10,16]],"date-time":"2018-10-16T11:07:51Z","timestamp":1539688071000},"page":"3492","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":28,"title":["Strength of Crowd (SOC)\u2014Defeating a Reactive Jammer in IoT with Decoy Messages"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"18","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0974-3639","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Savio","family":"Sciancalepore","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Division of Information and Computing Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha 5825, Qatar"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Gabriele","family":"Oligeri","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Division of Information and Computing Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha 5825, Qatar"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Roberto","family":"Di Pietro","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Division of Information and Computing Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha 5825, Qatar"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,10,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1125","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2017.2683200","article-title":"A Survey on Internet of Things: Architecture, Enabling Technologies, Security and Privacy, and Applications","volume":"4","author":"Lin","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1250","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2017.2694844","article-title":"A Survey on Security and Privacy Issues in Internet-of-Things","volume":"4","author":"Yang","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"42","DOI":"10.1109\/SURV.2009.090404","article-title":"A survey on jamming attacks and countermeasures in WSNs","volume":"11","author":"Mpitziopoulos","year":"2009","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. 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