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Article · L.N. Gumilev atyndaġy Euraziâ u̇lttyķ universitetìnìņ habaršysy. · September 30, 2025

Analyzing the security of ZigBee communication in smart environments via SDR

Tamara Kokenovna Zhukabayeva, Aigul Adamova, Zhandos Boranbay, Elhadj Benkhelifa, Yerik Mardenov

Yerik Mardenov
Open via DOIPDF

Abstract

The development of smart cities is accompanied by the widespread adoption of wirelessnetworks based on the ZigBee protocol, due to its energy efficiency and compatibility with Internetof Things architectures. However, the active use of this protocol in an open radio environmentincreases the risk of unauthorized radio-frequency interference. The study aims to experimentallyassess the vulnerability of ZigBee networks to targeted jamming using software-defined radio. Thepaper presents the stages of preparing a test environment with real devices, identifying the activedata transmission channel, and generating tone interference using the SDR platform HackRF Oneand the GNU Radio environment. The conducted experiment showed that, when affecting a specificfrequency, up to 95% of packets may be lost, rendering the network inoperable. The obtainedresults confirm the critical vulnerability of the ZigBee protocol at the physical layer and highlightthe need to develop additional protection mechanisms for wireless IoT networks, especially withinurban infrastructure. The proposed methodology can be used to test the resilience of devices inpractical scenarios and to support the development of monitoring systems capable of detecting andwithstanding external attacks.

Security in Wireless Sensor NetworksWireless Sensor Networks and IoTWireless Communication Security TechniquesZigBeewireless network securityjamming attacks

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