Location based services in wireless ad hoc networks

In this dissertation, we investigate location based services in wireless ad hoc networks from four different aspects - i) location privacy in wireless sensor networks (privacy), ii) end-to-end secure communication in randomly deployed wireless sensor networks (security), iii) quality versus latency trade-off in content retrieval under ad hoc node mobility (performance) and iv) location clustering based Sybil attack detection in vehicular ad hoc networks (trust). The first contribution of this dissertation is in addressing location privacy in wireless sensor networks. We propose a non-cooperative sensor localization algorithm showing how an external entity can stealthily invade into the location privacy of sensors in a network. We then design a location privacy preserving tracking algorithm for defending against such adversarial localization attacks. Next we investigate secure end-to-end communication in randomly deployed wireless sensor networks. Here, due to lack of control on sensors\u27 locations post deployment, pre-fixing pairwise keys between sensors is not feasible especially under larger scale random deployments. Towards this premise, we propose differentiated key pre-distribution for secure end-to-end secure communication, and show how it improves existing routing algorithms. Our next contribution is in addressing quality versus latency trade-off in content retrieval under ad hoc node mobility. We propose a two-tiered architecture for efficient content retrieval in such environment. Finally we investigate Sybil attack detection in vehicular ad hoc networks. A Sybil attacker can create and use multiple counterfeit identities risking trust of a vehicular ad hoc network, and then easily escape the location of the attack avoiding detection. We propose a location based clustering of nodes leveraging vehicle platoon dispersion for detection of Sybil attacks in vehicular ad hoc networks --Abstract, page iii

Routing protocol for V2X communications for Urban VANETs

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) have been attracting tremendous attention in both academia and industry due to emerging applications that pave the way towards safer enjoyable journeys and inclusive digital partnerships. Undoubtedly, these ITS applications will demand robust routing protocols that not only focus on Inter-Vehicle Communications but also on providing fast, reliable, and secure access to the infrastructure. This thesis aims mainly to introduce the challenges of data packets routing through urban environment using the help of infrastructure. Broadcasting transmission is an essential operational technique that serves a broad range of applications which demand different restrictive QoS provisioning levels. Although broadcast communication has been investigated widely in highway vehicular networks, it is undoubtedly still a challenge in the urban environment due to the obstacles, such as high buildings. In this thesis, the Road-Topology based Broadcast Protocol (RTBP) is proposed, a distance and contention-based forwarding scheme suitable for both urban and highway vehicular environments. RTBP aims at assigning the highest forwarding priority to a vehicle, called a mobile repeater, having the greatest capability to send the packet in multiple directions. In this way, RTBP effectively reduces the number of competing vehicles and minimises the number of hops required to retransmit the broadcast packets around the intersections to cover the targeted area. By investigating the RTBP under realistic urban scenarios against well-known broadcast protocols, eMDR and TAF, that are dedicated to retransmitting the packets around intersections, the results showed the superiority of the RTBP in delivering the most critical warning information for 90% of vehicles with significantly lower delay of 58% and 70% compared to eMDR and TAF. The validation of this performance was clear when the increase in the number of vehicles. Secondly, a Fast and Reliable Hybrid routing (FRHR) protocol is introduced for efficient infrastructure access which is capable of handling efficient vehicle to vehicle communications. Interface to infrastructure is provided by carefully placed RoadSide Units (RSUs) which broadcast beacons in a multi-hop fashion in constrained areas. This enables vehicles proactively to maintain fresh minimum-delay routes to other RSUs while reactively discovering routes to nearby vehicles. The proposed protocol utilizes RSUs connected to the wired backbone network to relay packets toward remote vehicles. A vehicle selects an RSU to register with according to the expected mean delay instead of the device’s remoteness. The FRHR performance is evaluated against established infrastructure routing protocols, Trafroute, IGSR and RBVT-R that are dedicated to for urban environment, the results showed an improvement of 20% to 33% in terms of packet delivery ratio and lower latency particularly in sparse networks due to its rapid response to changes in network connectivity. Thirdly, focusing on increasing FRHR’s capability to provide more stable and durable routes to support the QoS requirements of expected wide-range ITS applications on the urban environment, a new route selection mechanism is introduced, aiming at selecting highly connected crossroads. The new protocol is called, Stable Infrastructure Routing Protocol (SIRP). Intensive simulation results showed that SIRP offers low end-to-end delay and high delivery ratio with varying traffic density, while resolving the problem of frequent link failures