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

A survey on wireless ad hoc networks

A wireless ad hoc network is a collection of wireless nodes that can dynamically self-organize into an arbitrary and temporary topology to form a network without necessarily using any pre-existing infrastructure. These characteristics make ad hoc networks well suited for military activities, emergency operations, and disaster recoveries. Nevertheless, as electronic devices are getting smaller, cheaper, and more powerful, the mobile market is rapidly growing and, as a consequence, the need of seamlessly internetworking people and devices becomes mandatory. New wireless technologies enable easy deployment of commercial applications for ad hoc networks. The design of an ad hoc network has to take into account several interesting and difficult problems due to noisy, limited-range, and insecure wireless transmissions added to mobility and energy constraints. This paper presents an overview of issues related to medium access control (MAC), routing, and transport in wireless ad hoc networks and techniques proposed to improve the performance of protocols. Research activities and problems requiring further work are also presented. Finally, the paper presents a project concerning an ad hoc network to easily deploy Internet services on low-income habitations fostering digital inclusion8th IFIP/IEEE International conference on Mobile and Wireless CommunicationRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Flexible cross layer design for improved quality of service in MANETs

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel UniversityMobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are becoming increasingly important because of their unique characteristics of connectivity. Several delay sensitive applications are starting to appear in these kinds of networks. Therefore, an issue in concern is to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) in such constantly changing communication environment. The classical QoS aware solutions that have been used till now in the wired and infrastructure wireless networks are unable to achieve the necessary performance in the MANETs. The specialized protocols designed for multihop ad hoc networks offer basic connectivity with limited delay awareness and the mobility factor in the MANETs makes them even more unsuitable for use. Several protocols and solutions have been emerging in almost every layer in the protocol stack. The majority of the research efforts agree on the fact that in such dynamic environment in order to optimize the performance of the protocols, there is the need for additional information about the status of the network to be available. Hence, many cross layer design approaches appeared in the scene. Cross layer design has major advantages and the necessity to utilize such a design is definite. However, cross layer design conceals risks like architecture instability and design inflexibility. The aggressive use of cross layer design results in excessive increase of the cost of deployment and complicates both maintenance and upgrade of the network. The use of autonomous protocols like bio-inspired mechanisms and algorithms that are resilient on cross layer information unavailability, are able to reduce the dependence on cross layer design. In addition, properties like the prediction of the dynamic conditions and the adaptation to them are quite important characteristics. The design of a routing decision algorithm based on Bayesian Inference for the prediction of the path quality is proposed here. The accurate prediction capabilities and the efficient use of the plethora of cross layer information are presented. Furthermore, an adaptive mechanism based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to control the flow of the data in the transport layer. The aforementioned flow control mechanism inherits GA’s optimization capabilities without the need of knowing any details about the network conditions, thus, reducing the cross layer information dependence. Finally, is illustrated how Bayesian Inference can be used to suggest configuration parameter values to the other protocols in different layers in order to improve their performance.National Foundation of Scholarships of Greece(I.K.Y.

Performance issues in cellular wireless mesh networks

This thesis proposes a potential solution for future ubiquitous broadband wireless access networks, called a cellular wireless mesh network (CMESH), and investigates a number of its performance issues. A CMESH is organized in multi-radio, multi-channel, multi-rate and multi-hop radio cells. It can operate on abundant high radio frequencies, such as 5-50 GHz, and thus may satisfy the bandwidth requirements of future ubiquitous wireless applications. Each CMESH cell has a single Internet-connected gateway and serves up to hundreds of mesh nodes within its coverage area. This thesis studies performance issues in a CMESH, focusing on cell capacity, expressed in terms of the max-min throughput. In addition to introducing the concept of a CMESH, this thesis makes the following contributions. The first contribution is a new method for analyzing theoretical cell capacity. This new method is based on a new concept called Channel Transport Capacity (CTC), and derives new analytic expressions for capacity bounds for carrier-sense-based CMESH cells. The second contribution is a new algorithm called the Maximum Channel Collision Time (MCCT) algorithm and an expression for the nominal capacity of CMESH cells. This thesis proves that the nominal cell capacity is achievable and is the exact cell capacity for small cells within the abstract models. Finally, based on the MCCT algorithm, this thesis proposes a series of greedy algorithms for channel assignment and routing in CMESH cells. Simulation results show that these greedy algorithms can significantly improve the capacity of CMESH cells, compared with algorithms proposed by other researchers

Airborne Directional Networking: Topology Control Protocol Design

This research identifies and evaluates the impact of several architectural design choices in relation to airborne networking in contested environments related to autonomous topology control. Using simulation, we evaluate topology reconfiguration effectiveness using classical performance metrics for different point-to-point communication architectures. Our attention is focused on the design choices which have the greatest impact on reliability, scalability, and performance. In this work, we discuss the impact of several practical considerations of airborne networking in contested environments related to autonomous topology control modeling. Using simulation, we derive multiple classical performance metrics to evaluate topology reconfiguration effectiveness for different point-to-point communication architecture attributes for the purpose of qualifying protocol design elements

Energy-efficient and lifetime aware routing in WSNs

Network lifetime is an important performance metric in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Transmission Power Control (TPC) is a well-established method to minimise energy consumption in transmission in order to extend node lifetime and, consequently, lead to solutions that help extend network lifetime. The accurate lifetime estimation of sensor nodes is useful for routing to make more energy-efficient decisions and prolong lifetime. This research proposes an Energy-Efficient TPC (EETPC) mechanism using the measured Received Signal Strength (RSS) to calculate the ideal transmission power. This includes the investigation of the impact factors on RSS, such as distance, height above ground, multipath environment, the capability of node, noise and interference, and temperature. Furthermore, a Dynamic Node Lifetime Estimation (DNLE) technique for WSNs is also presented, including the impact factors on node lifetime, such as battery type, model, brand, self-discharge, discharge rate, age, charge cycles, and temperature. In addition, an Energy-Efficient and Lifetime Aware Routing (EELAR) algorithm is designed and developed for prolonging network lifetime in multihop WSNs. The proposed routing algorithm includes transmission power and lifetime metrics for path selection in addition to the Expected Transmission Count (ETX) metric. Both simulation and real hardware testbed experiments are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed schemes. The simulation experiments run on the AVRORA simulator for two hardware platforms: Mica2 and MicaZ. The testbed experiments run on two real hardware platforms: the N740 NanoSensor and Mica2. The corresponding implementations are on two operating systems: Contiki and TinyOS. The proposed TPC mechanism covers those investigated factors and gives an overall performance better than the existing techniques, i.e. it gives lower packet loss and power consumption rates, while delays do not significantly increase. It can be applied for single-hop with multihoming and multihop networks. Using the DNLE technique, node lifetime can be predicted more accurately, which can be applied for both static and dynamic loads. EELAR gives the best performance on packet loss rate, average node lifetime and network lifetime compared to the other algorithms and no significant difference is found between each algorithm with the packet delay