Two-tier Intrusion Detection System for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Nowadays, a commonly used wireless network (i.e. Wi-Fi) operates with the aid of a fixed infrastructure (i.e. an access point) to facilitate communication between nodes when they roam from one location to another. The need for such a fixed supporting infrastructure limits the adaptability of the wireless network, especially in situations where the deployment of such an infrastructure is impractical. In addition, Wi-Fi limits nodes' communication as it only provides facility for mobile nodes to send and receive information, but not reroute the information across the network. Recent advancements in computer network introduced a new wireless network, known as a Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET), to overcome these limitations. MANET has a set of unique characteristics that make it different from other kind of wireless networks. Often referred as a peer to peer network, such a network does not have any fixed topology, thus nodes are free to roam anywhere, and could join or leave the network anytime they desire. Its ability to be setup without the need of any infrastructure is very useful, especially in geographically constrained environments such as in a military battlefield or a disaster relief operation. In addition, through its multi hop routing facility, each node could function as a router, thus communication between nodes could be made available without the need of a supporting fixed router or an access point. However, these handy facilities come with big challenges, especially in dealing with the security issues. This research aims to address MANET security issues by proposing a novel intrusion detection system that could be used to complement existing prevention mechanisms that have been proposed to secure such a network. A comprehensive analysis of attacks and the existing security measures proved that there is a need for an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to protect MANETs against security threats. The analysis also suggested that the existing IDS proposed for MANET are not immune against a colluding blackmail attack due to the nature of such a network that comprises autonomous and anonymous nodes. The IDS architecture as proposed in this study utilises trust relationships between nodes to overcome this nodes' anonymity issue. Through a friendship mechanism, the problems of false accusations and false alarms caused by blackmail attackers in global detection and response mechanisms could be eliminated. The applicability of the friendship concept as well as other proposed mechanisms to solve MANET IDS related issues have been validated through a set of simulation experiments. Several MANET settings, which differ from each other based on the network's density level, the number of initial trusted friends owned by each node, and the duration of the simulation times, have been used to study the effects of such factors towards the overall performance of the proposed IDS framework. The results obtained from the experiments proved that the proposed concepts are capable to at least minimise i f not fully eliminate the problem currently faced in MANET IDS

IF-MANET: Interoperable framework for heterogeneous mobile ad hoc networks

The advances in low power micro-processors, wireless networks and embedded systems have raised the need to utilize the significant resources of mobile devices. These devices for example, smart phones, tablets, laptops, wearables, and sensors are gaining enormous processing power, storage capacity and wireless bandwidth. In addition, the advancement in wireless mobile technology has created a new communication paradigm via which a wireless network can be created without any priori infrastructure called mobile ad hoc network (MANET). While progress is being made towards improving the efficiencies of mobile devices and reliability of wireless mobile networks, the mobile technology is continuously facing the challenges of un-predictable disconnections, dynamic mobility and the heterogeneity of routing protocols. Hence, the traditional wired, wireless routing protocols are not suitable for MANET due to its unique dynamic ad hoc nature. Due to the reason, the research community has developed and is busy developing protocols for routing in MANET to cope with the challenges of MANET. However, there are no single generic ad hoc routing protocols available so far, which can address all the basic challenges of MANET as mentioned before. Thus this diverse range of ever growing routing protocols has created barriers for mobile nodes of different MANET taxonomies to intercommunicate and hence wasting a huge amount of valuable resources. To provide interaction between heterogeneous MANETs, the routing protocols require conversion of packets, meta-model and their behavioural capabilities. Here, the fundamental challenge is to understand the packet level message format, meta-model and behaviour of different routing protocols, which are significantly different for different MANET Taxonomies. To overcome the above mentioned issues, this thesis proposes an Interoperable Framework for heterogeneous MANETs called IF-MANET. The framework hides the complexities of heterogeneous routing protocols and provides a homogeneous layer for seamless communication between these routing protocols. The framework creates a unique Ontology for MANET routing protocols and a Message Translator to semantically compare the packets and generates the missing fields using the rules defined in the Ontology. Hence, the translation between an existing as well as newly arriving routing protocols will be achieved dynamically and on-the-fly. To discover a route for the delivery of packets across heterogeneous MANET taxonomies, the IF-MANET creates a special Gateway node to provide cluster based inter-domain routing. The IF-MANET framework can be used to develop different middleware applications. For example: Mobile grid computing that could potentially utilise huge amounts of aggregated data collected from heterogeneous mobile devices. Disaster & crises management applications can be created to provide on-the-fly infrastructure-less emergency communication across organisations by utilising different MANET taxonomies

Modelling and Performance Evaluation of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks are characterized by having nodes that are self-organized and cooperative without any kind of infrastructure, being the most promising upgrade of the current telecommunication systems. The mobility and multihop capability of these networks allows the network topology to change rapidly and unpredictably, turning necessary the development of appropriate models to describe the multihop connectivity and the dynamic of multihop paths. The research carried on in this dissertation starts by addressing the multihop connectivity for one-dimensional and two-dimensional ad hoc networks. The hop count probability distributions are derived when the underlying node spatial distribution is drawn from a Poisson process and, by using a Poisson randomization technique, when a fixed number of relay nodes are uniformly distributed in a region of interest. Numerical results illustrate the computation of the hop count probabilities. We then present an analytical framework to characterize the random behavior of a multihop path by means of a piecewise deterministic Markov process. The mean path duration and the path persistence metrics are obtained as the unique solution of a system of integro-differential equations, and a recursive scheme for their computation is provided. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the computation of the metrics and to compare the associated results with independent link approximation result

Link failure detection, network recovery, and network reliability in multi-hop wireless networks

In this thesis, we study Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) and Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET), which are two kinds of wireless multi-hop communication networks. WMNs and MANETs are promising technologies that have the ability to provide effective solutions to many applications in the technological, social, military, disaster recovery, and economic fields. Some of these applications are the extension of the cellular network's coverage, broadband internet access, and community and neighborhood networks. The big challenge in these kinds of networks is the frequent link failures, which make them less reliable compared to other kinds of networks. Implementing a fast mechanism to detect link failures, effective and reliable routing protocols and metrics, and a powerful reconfiguration scheme to recover from the link failures greatly enhance the WMNs and MANETs performance, and increase their reliability and availability. Our research has three directions. In the first direction, we study link failure detection approaches and link failure recovery techniques. In this direction, we mathematically analyze Hello based link failure detection approach implemented in routing protocols that use two routes, one as a primary route, and the other one as a backup route that is immediately used upon link failures. The objectives behind the above analysis are to mathematically calculate the packet delivery ratio, and to find how much gain we could achieve by using two routes instead of one. Our results show that the packet delivery is increased by 1.5 times by using two routes instead of one. It also shows that applying two routes is essential to cover high link failure rate values, and the need using two routes instead of one is more urgent in WMNs and MANETs with higher link failure rate values, i.e. less reliable networks. In addition to that, we propose a novel framework that dynamically assigns the values of Hello based link failure detection scheme parameters based on the communication types and the QoS requirements. Besides that, we propose a novel protocol to enhance the Hello based link failure detection scheme performance. In the second direction, we study the reliable routing protocols and metrics. This thesis proposes a novel adaptive routing protocol to increase the network connectivity and reliability, while minimizing the hop count, reducing the network nodes' spatial distribution and memory, and simplifying the routing process. The network reliability and connectivity are investigated in the last direction. Based in our study, the only ways to provide reliable and stable communications, virtually decrease the packet loss to zero, and to support multimedia communications in MANETs and WMNs are by using multi-route instead of one, and letting the routing protocols select the most stable routes among the available routes. The network node density specifies the probability that a route exists between any randomly chosen source and destination pair. Thus, to ensure the existence of two routes between any source and destination pairs, the node density must be above a certain threshold. In this thesis, we propose a mathematical model to find the above threshold. Our results show that the probability to have two routes exponentially increases with the number of nodes until it reaches the saturation region where the increase of the number of nodes has negligible improvements in terms of network availability. In addition to that, we study the effects of nodes mobility on the network connectivity. Our work is evaluated by MATLAB

Flexible HW-SW design and analysis of an MMT-based MANET system on FPGA

Recently there has been a rapid growth of research interests in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs). Their infrastructureless and dynamic nature demands that new strategies be implemented on a robust wireless communication platform in order to provide efficient end-to-end communication. Many routing algorithms have been developed to serve this purpose. This thesis investigated Multi-Meshed Tree (MMT) algorithm, an integrated solution that combines routing, clustering and medium access control operations based on a common multi-meshed tree concept. It provides the robustness and redundancy inherent in mesh topologies and uses the tree branches to deliver packets. MMT is the first of its kind that enables a single algorithm to form multiple proactive routes within a cluster while supporting reactive routes between different clusters. Recent published research and simulations have shown its favorable features and results. To explore the MMT algorithm\u27s novel feature in real systems against simulation work, this work adopts Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) as the platform for wireless system implementations. Full hardware and various System-on-Chip Hardware-Software designs are developed and studied, providing a design practice that contributes to low-cost system development in the field of MANET by utilizing the evolving FPGA technology. The results show that the MMT-based systems functioned accurately and effectively; in all proposed test scenarios they demonstrated many of the features that a desired MANET routing algorithm should have: high transmission success rate, low latency, scalability, few queued packets and low overhead. The results give valuable insights into the MMT algorithm\u27s performance and facilitate its future improvements

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: quality-of-service and video communication, routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

Routing and interworking protocols for next generation wireless networks

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Communication between nodes for autonomic and distributed management

Doutoramento conjunto MAPi em InformáticaOver the last decade, the most widespread approaches for traditional management were based on the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) or Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP). However, they both have several problems in terms of scalability, due to their centralization characteristics. Although the distributed management approaches exhibit better performance in terms of scalability, they still underperform regarding communication costs, autonomy, extensibility, exibility, robustness, and cooperation between network nodes. The cooperation between network nodes normally requires excessive overheads for synchronization and dissemination of management information in the network. For emerging dynamic and large-scale networking environments, as envisioned in Next Generation Networks (NGNs), exponential growth in the number of network devices and mobile communications and application demands is expected. Thus, a high degree of management automation is an important requirement, along with new mechanisms that promote it optimally and e ciently, taking into account the need for high cooperation between the nodes. Current approaches for self and autonomic management allow the network administrator to manage large areas, performing fast reaction and e ciently facing unexpected problems. The management functionalities should be delegated to a self-organized plane operating within the network, that decrease the network complexity and the control information ow, as opposed to centralized or external servers. This Thesis aims to propose and develop a communication framework for distributed network management which integrates a set of mechanisms for initial communication, exchange of management information, network (re) organization and data dissemination, attempting to meet the autonomic and distributed management requirements posed by NGNs. The mechanisms are lightweight and portable, and they can operate in di erent hardware architectures and include all the requirements to maintain the basis for an e cient communication between nodes in order to ensure autonomic network management. Moreover, those mechanisms were explored in diverse network conditions and events, such as device and link errors, di erent tra c/network loads and requirements. The results obtained through simulation and real experimentation show that the proposed mechanisms provide a lower convergence time, smaller overhead impact in the network, faster dissemination of management information, increase stability and quality of the nodes associations, and enable the support for e cient data information delivery in comparison to the base mechanisms analyzed. Finally, all mechanisms for communication between nodes proposed in this Thesis, that support and distribute the management information and network control functionalities, were devised and developed to operate in completely decentralized scenarios.Durante a última década, protocolos como Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) ou Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) foram as abordagens mais comuns para a gestão tradicional de redes. Essas abordagens têm vários problemas em termos de escalabilidade, devido às suas características de centralização. Apresentando um melhor desempenho em termos de escalabilidade, as abordagens de gestão distribuída, por sua vez, são vantajosas nesse sentido, mas também apresentam uma série de desvantagens acerca do custo elevado de comunicação, autonomia, extensibilidade, exibilidade, robustez e cooperação entre os nós da rede. A cooperação entre os nós presentes na rede é normalmente a principal causa de sobrecarga na rede, uma vez que necessita de colectar, sincronizar e disseminar as informações de gestão para todos os nós nela presentes. Em ambientes dinâmicos, como é o caso das redes atuais e futuras, espera-se um crescimento exponencial no número de dispositivos, associado a um grau elevado de mobilidade dos mesmos na rede. Assim, o grau elevado de funções de automatiza ção da gestão da rede é uma exigência primordial, bem como o desenvolvimento de novos mecanismos e técnicas que permitam essa comunicação de forma optimizada e e ciente. Tendo em conta a necessidade de elevada cooperação entre os elementos da rede, as abordagens atuais para a gestão autonómica permitem que o administrador possa gerir grandes áreas de forma rápida e e ciente frente a problemas inesperados, visando diminuir a complexidade da rede e o uxo de informações de controlo nela gerados. Nas gestões autonómicas a delegação de operações da rede é suportada por um plano auto-organizado e não dependente de servidores centralizados ou externos. Com base nos tipos de gestão e desa os acima apresentados, esta Tese tem como principal objetivo propor e desenvolver um conjunto de mecanismos necessários para a criação de uma infra-estrutura de comunicação entre nós, na tentativa de satisfazer as exigências da gestão auton ómica e distribuída apresentadas pelas redes de futura geração. Nesse sentido, mecanismos especí cos incluindo inicialização e descoberta dos elementos da rede, troca de informação de gestão, (re) organização da rede e disseminação de dados foram elaborados e explorados em diversas condições e eventos, tais como: falhas de ligação, diferentes cargas de tráfego e exigências de rede. Para além disso, os mecanismos desenvolvidos são leves e portáveis, ou seja, podem operar em diferentes arquitecturas de hardware e contemplam todos os requisitos necessários para manter a base de comunicação e ciente entre os elementos da rede. Os resultados obtidos através de simulações e experiências reais comprovam que os mecanismos propostos apresentam um tempo de convergência menor para descoberta e troca de informação, um menor impacto na sobrecarga da rede, disseminação mais rápida da informação de gestão, aumento da estabilidade e a qualidade das ligações entre os nós e entrega e ciente de informações de dados em comparação com os mecanismos base analisados. Finalmente, todos os mecanismos desenvolvidos que fazem parte da infrastrutura de comunicação proposta foram concebidos e desenvolvidos para operar em cenários completamente descentralizados

Smart identification of MANET nodes using AODV routeing protocol

MANET routeing protocols can be either straightforward focusing on establishing and maintaining the path only, or too sophisticated with heavy key-based authentication/encryption algorithms. The consequence for both cases creates issues in the QoS implementation of MANET. This thesis focuses on providing three enhancements to the well-known AODV routeing protocol, without altering the functionality or impeding its performance. It proposes a scheme that improves AODV routeing discovery process without the overhead associated with integrity/authenticity that we called SIMAN (Smart Identification for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks). First, SIMAN introduces a prime number based mathematical algorithm in a thin layer between the communication links of the IP layer of the AODV routeing protocol. The algorithm replaces existing AODV “retrieval of node addresses” from the routeing table, with a “prime factorization of two values”. These two values are calculated during the RREP process, and thus enhances the AODV routeing protocol to provide knowledge of nodes in the RREP path beyond neighbouring nodes that are out of the transmission range. The second SIMAN enhancement is to attach the node’s geographical coordinates to the RREP message to enable the trilateration calculation of newly joined nodes. This process enhances AODV further by providing the nodes with the knowledge of the physical location of every node inside the path. Consequently, by combining both enhancements, AODV can have abstract authentication to prevent from hidden nodes like wormholes. The final enhancement is to enable SIMAN to construct most efficient paths with nodes that have high battery energy. This is achieved by adding each node’s battery level to the RREP message, where the source will examine the available knowledge of the possible routes that can work efficiently without disconnections or link breakage. The OPNET simulation platform is used for the implementation, verification and testing of this scheme. The results show that the AODV route discovery procedure was not affected in function or performance by our scheme and that the overhead caused by our three enhancements has improved the performance of AODV in certain conditions