Ad Hoc Networking for Pervasive Systems

The hardware and software progresses of the last ten years provided the basic elements (wearable computers, several wireless-network technologies, devices for sensing and remote control, etc.) for the realization of pervasive computing and communication systems. In these systems the environment is saturated with computing and communication capabilities, completely integrated with the surrounding environment, aimed at helping the users in the everyday life. In a pervasive computing environment, the infrastructure-based wireless communication model is often not adequate: it takes time to set up the infrastructure network, while the costs associated with installing infrastructure can be quite high. These costs and delays may not be acceptable for dynamic environments where people and/or vehicles need to be temporarily interconnected in areas without a pre-existing communication infrastructure (e.g., inter-vehicular and disaster networks), or where the infrastructure cost is not justified (e.g., in-building networks, specific residential communities networks, etc.). In these cases, infrastructure-less or ad hoc networks provide a more efficient solution

Security in Ad Hoc Networks and Pervasive Computing

Pervasive computing is an exciting and blooming research field, in which innovative techniques and applications are continuously emerging and aim to provide ambient and personalized services to users with high quality. Ad hoc networks are wireless, self-organizing systems formed by cooperating nodes within communication range of each other that form temporary networks. Their topology is dynamic, decentralized, ever changing and the nodes may move around arbitrarily. The last few years have witnessed a wealth of research ideas on ad hoc networking that are moving rapidly into implemented standards. Technology under development for ad hoc networks and pervasive computing is making important steps toward this end goal possible

User-Centric Security and Privacy Mechanisms in Untrusted Networking and Computing Environments

Our modern society is increasingly relying on the collection, processing, and sharing of digital information. There are two fundamental trends: (1) Enabled by the rapid developments in sensor, wireless, and networking technologies, communication and networking are becoming more and more pervasive and ad hoc. (2) Driven by the explosive growth of hardware and software capabilities, computation power is becoming a public utility and information is often stored in centralized servers which facilitate ubiquitous access and sharing. Many emerging platforms and systems hinge on both dimensions, such as E-healthcare and Smart Grid. However, the majority information handled by these critical systems is usually sensitive and of high value, while various security breaches could compromise the social welfare of these systems. Thus there is an urgent need to develop security and privacy mechanisms to protect the authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of the collected data, and to control the disclosure of private information. In achieving that, two unique challenges arise: (1) There lacks centralized trusted parties in pervasive networking; (2) The remote data servers tend not to be trusted by system users in handling their data. They make existing security solutions developed for traditional networked information systems unsuitable. To this end, in this dissertation we propose a series of user-centric security and privacy mechanisms that resolve these challenging issues in untrusted network and computing environments, spanning wireless body area networks (WBAN), mobile social networks (MSN), and cloud computing. The main contributions of this dissertation are fourfold. First, we propose a secure ad hoc trust initialization protocol for WBAN, without relying on any pre-established security context among nodes, while defending against a powerful wireless attacker that may or may not compromise sensor nodes. The protocol is highly usable for a human user. Second, we present novel schemes for sharing sensitive information among distributed mobile hosts in MSN which preserves user privacy, where the users neither need to fully trust each other nor rely on any central trusted party. Third, to realize owner-controlled sharing of sensitive data stored on untrusted servers, we put forward a data access control framework using Multi-Authority Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE), that supports scalable fine-grained access and on-demand user revocation, and is free of key-escrow. Finally, we propose mechanisms for authorized keyword search over encrypted data on untrusted servers, with efficient multi-dimensional range, subset and equality query capabilities, and with enhanced search privacy. The common characteristic of our contributions is they minimize the extent of trust that users must place in the corresponding network or computing environments, in a way that is user-centric, i.e., favoring individual owners/users

An Overview of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks for the Existing Protocols and Applications

Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of two or more devices or nodes or terminals with wireless communications and networking capability that communicate with each other without the aid of any centralized administrator also the wireless nodes that can dynamically form a network to exchange information without using any existing fixed network infrastructure. And it's an autonomous system in which mobile hosts connected by wireless links are free to be dynamically and some time act as routers at the same time, and we discuss in this paper the distinct characteristics of traditional wired networks, including network configuration may change at any time, there is no direction or limit the movement and so on, and thus needed a new optional path Agreement (Routing Protocol) to identify nodes for these actions communicate with each other path, An ideal choice way the agreement should not only be able to find the right path, and the Ad Hoc Network must be able to adapt to changing network of this type at any time. and we talk in details in this paper all the information of Mobile Ad Hoc Network which include the History of ad hoc, wireless ad hoc, wireless mobile approaches and types of mobile ad Hoc networks, and then we present more than 13 types of the routing Ad Hoc Networks protocols have been proposed. In this paper, the more representative of routing protocols, analysis of individual characteristics and advantages and disadvantages to collate and compare, and present the all applications or the Possible Service of Ad Hoc Networks.Comment: 24 Pages, JGraph-Hoc Journa

Security in Pervasive Computing: Current Status and Open Issues

Million of wireless device users are ever on the move, becoming more dependent on their PDAs, smart phones, and other handheld devices. With the advancement of pervasive computing, new and unique capabilities are available to aid mobile societies. The wireless nature of these devices has fostered a new era of mobility. Thousands of pervasive devices are able to arbitrarily join and leave a network, creating a nomadic environment known as a pervasive ad hoc network. However, mobile devices have vulnerabilities, and some are proving to be challenging. Security in pervasive computing is the most critical challenge. Security is needed to ensure exact and accurate confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and access control, to name a few. Security for mobile devices, though still in its infancy, has drawn the attention of various researchers. As pervasive devices become incorporated in our day-to-day lives, security will increasingly becoming a common concern for all users - - though for most it will be an afterthought, like many other computing functions. The usability and expansion of pervasive computing applications depends greatly on the security and reliability provided by the applications. At this critical juncture, security research is growing. This paper examines the recent trends and forward thinking investigation in several fields of security, along with a brief history of previous accomplishments in the corresponding areas. Some open issues have been discussed for further investigation