Secure Visible Light Communication System via Cooperative Attack Detecting Techniques

Abstract

With the recent development of fourth industrial technology, the need for a broadband short-range wireless communication system to realize an ultraconnected, ultra-low latency, and ultra-realistic intelligent information society has emerged. Among the next-generation communication network technologies that can fulfill the technical demands, visible light communication (VLC) is a promising technology that can use illuminated light as a communication light source, which is convenient and environmentally friendly and has high energy and frequency efficiency. However, although VLC has a high level of security owing to the straightness and transparency of visible light, if some of the VLC nodes in a dense mesh network environment are hacked by external attacks, there can be critical performance degradation by jamming attacks. Although several studies have suggested the possibility of VLC jamming attacks, only a few have studied how to effectively detect and respond to these attacks. This study proposes a method to collaboratively detect and respond to jamming attacks in smart LED-based VLC systems. According to the experimental results of this study, the proposed cooperative method showed 91% attack detection accuracy and 1.82 times better than the k-random method. The proposed method showed a minimum detection rate of 84% even in an obstacle-rich environment, proving outstanding attack detection performance 1.68 times better than the k-random method.