Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey

This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols, user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed, use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are some text overlaps with the previous submissio

Game theoretic approach in routing protocols for wireless mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are becoming popular as a means of providing communication among a group of people. Because of self-configuring and self-organizing characteristics, MANETs can be deployed quickly. There is no infrastructure defined in the network, therefore all of the participating nodes relay packets for other nodes and perform routing if necessary. Because of the limitations in wireless transmission range, communication links could be multi-hop. Routing protocol is the most important element of MANET. Routing protocols for MANET can broadly be classified as proactive routing protocol and reactive routing protocol. In proactive routing protocols like Destination Sequence Distance Vector (DSDV), mobile nodes periodically exchange routing information among themselves. Hence proactive routing protocols generate high overhead messages in the network. On the other hand, reactive routing protocols like Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) work on-demand. Hence reactive routing protocols generate fewer number of overhead messages in the network compared to proactive routing protocols. But reactive routing protocols use a global search mechanism called flooding during the route discovery process. By flooding mechanism a source node can discover multiple routes to a destination. Flooding generates a large number of overhead packets in the network and is the root cause of scaling problem of reactive routing protocols. Hierarchical Dynamic Source Routing (HDSR) protocol has been proposed in this dissertation to solve that scaling problem. The DSR protocol has been modified and optimized to implement HDSR protocol. HDSR protocol reduces the flooding problem of reactive routing protocols by introducing hierarchy among nodes. Two game theoretic models, Forwarding Dilemma Game (FDG) and Forwarding Game Routing Protocol (FGRP), is proposed to minimize the \u27flooding\u27 effect by restricting nodes that should participate in route discovery process based on their status. Both FDG and FGRP protocols reduce overhead packet and improve network performances in terms of delay packet delivery ratio and throughput. Both protocols were implemented in AODV and the resulting protocol outperformed AODV in our NS-2 simulations. A thorough connectivity analysis was also performed for FDG and FGRP to ensure that these protocols do not introduce disconnectivity. Surprisingly, both FDG and FGRP showed better connectivity compared to AODV in moderate to high node density networks

Adaptive epidemic dissemination as a finite-horizon optimal stopping problem

Wireless ad hoc networks are characterized by their limited capabilities and their routine deployment in unfavorable environments. This creates the strong requirement to regulate energy expenditure. We present a scheme to regulate energy cost through optimized transmission scheduling in a noisy epidemic dissemination environment. Building on the intrinsically cross-layer nature of the adaptive epidemic dissemination process, we strive to deliver an optimized mechanism, where energy cost is regulated without compromising the network infection. Improvement of data freshness and applicability in routing are also investigated. Extensive simulations are used to support our proposal

Game theoretic approach in routing protocol for wireless ad hoc networks

This paper introduces a game theoretic method, called forwarding dilemma game (FDG), which controls routing overhead in dense multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks. The players of the game are the wireless nodes with set of strategies {Forward, Not forward}. The game is played whenever an arbitrary node in the network receives a flooding packet. In FDG, every player needs to know the number of players of the game. That is why a neighbor discovery protocol (NDP) is introduced. In order for NDP to function, a field is attached to the flooding packets (routing overhead packets). The mixed strategy Nash equilibrium is used as a solution for the FDG. This provides the probability that the flooding packet would be forwarded by the receiver node. FDG with NDP is implemented in AODV protocol in Network Simulator NS-2 to verify its performance with simulations. FDG with NDP improves performance of the AODV compared to the same network with only AODV protocol in moderate and high node densities. FDG can be applied to any routing protocol that uses flooding in the route discovery phase

Flooding control in route discovery for reactive routing in mobile ad hoc networks

Routing is a very important function in the network layer of the OSI model for wired and wireless networks. Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are a collection of wireless nodes forming a temporary network that is supposed to be constructed on the fly without infrastructure and prior setup. This fashion of setup demands that the nodes act as routers for other nodes. This necessitates the need of a robust dynamic routing scheme. Routing protocols are classified into three main categories: proactive, reactive, and hybrid. Reactive routing has been the focus of research in recent years due to its control traffic overhead reduction. Reactive routing operation involves three main steps: route discovery, packet delivery, and route maintenance. If a source node, initiating the message, knows the route to the destination, this route is used to transmit the message; otherwise, the source node will initiate a route discovery algorithm to build the route, which highlights the importance of this phase of the on-demand routing process. This thesis work will present a route discovery algorithm that will try to find the route between the sender and the intended receiver in relatively short periods of end-to-end delay, least amount of control traffic overhead, and a loop free path between the two communicating parties. Furthermore, performance comparison between the proposed algorithm and other standard algorithms, namely basic flooding and flooding with self-pruning, will be conducted. The proposed route discovery algorithm can be used in several approaches serving ad hoc network setup, where connectivity establishment and maintenance is important

Energy-aware routing protocols in wireless sensor networks

Saving energy and increasing network lifetime are significant challenges in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Energy-aware routing protocols have been introduced for WSNs to overcome limitations of WSN including limited power resources and difficulties renewing or recharging sensor nodes batteries. Furthermore, the potentially inhospitable environments of sensor locations, in some applications, such as the bottom of the ocean, or inside tornados also have to be considered. ZigBee is one of the latest communication standards designed for WSNs based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The ZigBee standard supports two routing protocols, the Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV), and the cluster-tree routing protocols. These protocols are implemented to establish the network, form clusters, and transfer data between the nodes. The AODV and the cluster-tree routing protocols are two of the most efficient routing protocols in terms of reducing the control message overhead, reducing the bandwidth usage in the network, and reducing the power consumption of wireless sensor nodes compared to other routing protocols. However, neither of these protocols considers the energy level or the energy consumption rate of the wireless sensor nodes during the establishment or routing processes. (Continues...)

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Guiding readers through the basics of these rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations, Mobile Ad hoc Networks: Current Status and Future Trends identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). Containing the contributions of leading researchers, industry professionals, and academics, this forward-looking reference provides an authoritative perspective of the state of the art in MANETs. The book includes surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as limited resources and the mobility of mobile nodes. It considers routing, multicast, energy, security, channel assignment, and ensuring quality of service. Also suitable as a text for graduate students, the book is organized into three sections: Fundamentals of MANET Modeling and Simulation—Describes how MANETs operate and perform through simulations and models Communication Protocols of MANETs—Presents cutting-edge research on key issues, including MAC layer issues and routing in high mobility Future Networks Inspired By MANETs—Tackles open research issues and emerging trends Illustrating the role MANETs are likely to play in future networks, this book supplies the foundation and insight you will need to make your own contributions to the field. It includes coverage of routing protocols, modeling and simulations tools, intelligent optimization techniques to multicriteria routing, security issues in FHAMIPv6, connecting moving smart objects to the Internet, underwater sensor networks, wireless mesh network architecture and protocols, adaptive routing provision using Bayesian inference, and adaptive flow control in transport layer using genetic algorithms

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: vehicular ad-hoc networks, security and caching, TCP in ad-hoc networks and emerging applications. It is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

A COMMUNICATION FRAMEWORK FOR MULTIHOP WIRELESS ACCESS AND SENSOR NETWORKS: ANYCAST ROUTING & SIMULATION TOOLS

The reliance on wireless networks has grown tremendously within a number of varied application domains, prompting an evolution towards the use of heterogeneous multihop network architectures. We propose and analyze two communication frameworks for such networks. A first framework is designed for communications within multihop wireless access networks. The framework supports dynamic algorithms for locating access points using anycast routing with multiple metrics and balancing network load. The evaluation shows significant performance improvement over traditional solutions. A second framework is designed for communication within sensor networks and includes lightweight versions of our algorithms to fit the limitations of sensor networks. Analysis shows that this stripped down version can work almost equally well if tailored to the needs of a sensor network. We have also developed an extensive simulation environment using NS-2 to test realistic situations for the evaluations of our work. Our tools support analysis of realistic scenarios including the spreading of a forest fire within an area, and can easily be ported to other simulation software. Lastly, we us our algorithms and simulation environment to investigate sink movements optimization within sensor networks. Based on these results, we propose strategies, to be addressed in follow-on work, for building topology maps and finding optimal data collection points. Altogether, the communication framework and realistic simulation tools provide a complete communication and evaluation solution for access and sensor networks