ResCTC: Resilience in Wireless Networks through Cross-Technology Communication

Resilient wireless networks ensure that the network maintains functionality despite adverse conditions like hardware and software failures, adversarial jamming attacks, or environmental changes like wireless channel fading which can disrupt connectivity. We show that Cross-Technology Communication (CTC), which was developed to enable direct communication between otherwise incompatible radio technologies, can be utilized to improve the resilience in wireless networks. This is achieved by increasing the number of independent wireless links between adjacent wireless nodes as well as by the increase in communication distance resulting in increased path diversity. Results from our analysis reveal that the same level of resilience can be achieved with reduced number of radio interfaces per node while tolerating an order of magnitude higher node failure rate. Moreover, such CTC-enabled networks are more resilient to advanced technology-specific jamming attacks.