A C-RAN-Based Mitigation of Reactive Jamming Attacks in LoRa Networks with Jamming Cancellation

LoRa modulation has gained considerable attention in wireless Internet of Things applications, from sensor networks to smart systems, due to its long-range and low-power capabilities, and it is currently one of the major technologies used in low-power wide-area networks. However, like many wireless technologies, LoRa-based networks remain vulnerable to jamming attacks, which can lead to denial-of-service. This paper proposes a technique to mitigate jamming attacks by estimating and canceling the jamming signal in scenarios where a gateway is jammed by a nearby adversary. Additionally, the benefits of a centralized radio access network architecture are explored for networks with multiple gateways and jammers, enabling post-cancellation demodulation at a central unit to enhance the legitimate signal against residual jamming signals. The simulation results show that this approach achieves an overall frame success rate (FSR) of more than 90% in areas covered by multiple gateways, with the centralized processing providing up to 1.5× gain over the standard distributed anti-jamming approach at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Increasing the code rate from 4/5 to 4/7 further improves the FSR, up to 3× at low SNR and 1.5× at high SNR, at the cost of an increase in frame air-time. Finally, jammers located within 20 m of a gateway significantly degrade the achieved FSR, keeping it below 55% even with a code rate of 4/7 and the centralized processing, suggesting that gateway placement should prioritize restricted-access locations.