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 scheme for efficient peer-to-peer live video streaming over wireless mesh networks

Peers in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) live video streaming system over hybrid wireless mesh networks (WMNs) enjoy high video quality when both random network coding (RNC) and an efficient hybrid routing protocol are employed. Although RNC is the most recently used method of efficient video streaming, it imposes high transmission overhead and decoding computational complexity on the network which reduces the perceived video quality. Besides that, RNC cannot guaranty a non-existence of linear dependency in the generated coefficients matrix. In WMNs, node mobility has not been efficiently addressed by current hybrid routing protocols that increase video distortion which would lead to low video quality. In addition, these protocols cannot efficiently support nodes which operate in infrastructure mode. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to propose a P2P live video streaming scheme which consists of two phases followed by the integration of these two phases known as the third phase to provide high video quality in hybrid WMNs. In the first phase, a novel coefficients matrix generation and inversion method has been proposed to address the mentioned limitations of RNC. In the second phase, the proposed enhanced hybrid routing protocol was used to efficiently route video streams among nodes using the most stable path with low routing overhead. Moreover, this protocol effectively supports mobility and nodes which operate in infrastructure mode by exploiting the advantages of the designed locator service. Results of simulations from the first phase showed that video distortion as the most important performance metric in live video streaming, had improved by 36 percent in comparison with current RNC method which employs the Gauss-Jordan Elimination (RNC-GJE) method in decoding. Other metrics including frame dependency distortion, initial start-up delay and end-to-end delay have also improved using the proposed method. Based on previous studies, although Reactive (DYMO) routing protocol provides better performance than other existing routing protocols in a hybrid WMN, the proposed protocol in the second phase had average improvements in video distortion of l86% for hybrid wireless mesh protocol (HWMP), 49% for Reactive (Dynamic MANET On-Demand-DYMO), 75% for Proactive (Optimized Link State Routing-OLSR), and 60% for Ad-hoc on-demand Distance Vector Spanning-Tree (AODV-ST). Other metrics including end-to-end delay, packet delay variation, routing overhead and number of delivered video frames have also improved using the proposed protocol. Finally, the third phase, an integration of the first two phases has proven to be an efficient scheme for high quality P2P live video streaming over hybrid WMNs. This video streaming scheme had averagely improved video distortion by 41%, frame dependency distortion by 50%, initial start-up delay by 15% and end-to-end delay by 33% in comparison with the average introduced values by three other considered integration cases which are Reactive and RNC-GJE, Reactive and the first phase, the second phase and RNC-GJE

Overlay virtualized wireless sensor networks for application in industrial internet of things : a review

Abstract: In recent times, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are broadly applied in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in order to enhance the productivity and efficiency of existing and prospective manufacturing industries. In particular, an area of interest that concerns the use of WSNs in IIoT is the concept of sensor network virtualization and overlay networks. Both network virtualization and overlay networks are considered contemporary because they provide the capacity to create services and applications at the edge of existing virtual networks without changing the underlying infrastructure. This capability makes both network virtualization and overlay network services highly beneficial, particularly for the dynamic needs of IIoT based applications such as in smart industry applications, smart city, and smart home applications. Consequently, the study of both WSN virtualization and overlay networks has become highly patronized in the literature, leading to the growth and maturity of the research area. In line with this growth, this paper provides a review of the development made thus far concerning virtualized sensor networks, with emphasis on the application of overlay networks in IIoT. Principally, the process of virtualization in WSN is discussed along with its importance in IIoT applications. Different challenges in WSN are also presented along with possible solutions given by the use of virtualized WSNs. Further details are also presented concerning the use of overlay networks as the next step to supporting virtualization in shared sensor networks. Our discussion closes with an exposition of the existing challenges in the use of virtualized WSN for IIoT applications. In general, because overlay networks will be contributory to the future development and advancement of smart industrial and smart city applications, this review may be considered by researchers as a reference point for those particularly interested in the study of this growing field

A network access control framework for 6LoWPAN networks

Low power over wireless personal area networks (LoWPAN), in particular wireless sensor networks, represent an emerging technology with high potential to be employed in critical situations like security surveillance, battlefields, smart-grids, and in e-health applications. The support of security services in LoWPAN is considered a challenge. First, this type of networks is usually deployed in unattended environments, making them vulnerable to security attacks. Second, the constraints inherent to LoWPAN, such as scarce resources and limited battery capacity, impose a careful planning on how and where the security services should be deployed. Besides protecting the network from some well-known threats, it is important that security mechanisms be able to withstand attacks that have not been identified before. One way of reaching this goal is to control, at the network access level, which nodes can be attached to the network and to enforce their security compliance. This paper presents a network access security framework that can be used to control the nodes that have access to the network, based on administrative approval, and to enforce security compliance to the authorized nodes

Mesh-Mon: a Monitoring and Management System for Wireless Mesh Networks

A mesh network is a network of wireless routers that employ multi-hop routing and can be used to provide network access for mobile clients. Mobile mesh networks can be deployed rapidly to provide an alternate communication infrastructure for emergency response operations in areas with limited or damaged infrastructure. In this dissertation, we present Dart-Mesh: a Linux-based layer-3 dual-radio two-tiered mesh network that provides complete 802.11b coverage in the Sudikoff Lab for Computer Science at Dartmouth College. We faced several challenges in building, testing, monitoring and managing this network. These challenges motivated us to design and implement Mesh-Mon, a network monitoring system to aid system administrators in the management of a mobile mesh network. Mesh-Mon is a scalable, distributed and decentralized management system in which mesh nodes cooperate in a proactive manner to help detect, diagnose and resolve network problems automatically. Mesh-Mon is independent of the routing protocol used by the mesh routing layer and can function even if the routing protocol fails. We demonstrate this feature by running Mesh-Mon on two versions of Dart-Mesh, one running on AODV (a reactive mesh routing protocol) and the second running on OLSR (a proactive mesh routing protocol) in separate experiments. Mobility can cause links to break, leading to disconnected partitions. We identify critical nodes in the network, whose failure may cause a partition. We introduce two new metrics based on social-network analysis: the Localized Bridging Centrality (LBC) metric and the Localized Load-aware Bridging Centrality (LLBC) metric, that can identify critical nodes efficiently and in a fully distributed manner. We run a monitoring component on client nodes, called Mesh-Mon-Ami, which also assists Mesh-Mon nodes in the dissemination of management information between physically disconnected partitions, by acting as carriers for management data. We conclude, from our experimental evaluation on our 16-node Dart-Mesh testbed, that our system solves several management challenges in a scalable manner, and is a useful and effective tool for monitoring and managing real-world mesh networks

ATLAS: A Traffic Load Aware Sensor MAC Design for Collaborative Body Area Sensor Networks

In collaborative body sensor networks, namely wireless body area networks (WBANs), each of the physical sensor applications is used to collaboratively monitor the health status of the human body. The applications of WBANs comprise diverse and dynamic traffic loads such as very low-rate periodic monitoring (i.e., observation) data and high-rate traffic including event-triggered bursts. Therefore, in designing a medium access control (MAC) protocol for WBANs, energy conservation should be the primary concern during low-traffic periods, whereas a balance between satisfying high-throughput demand and efficient energy usage is necessary during high-traffic times. In this paper, we design a traffic load-aware innovative MAC solution for WBANs, called ATLAS. The design exploits the superframe structure of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, and it adaptively uses the contention access period (CAP), contention free period (CFP) and inactive period (IP) of the superframe based on estimated traffic load, by applying a dynamic “wh” (whenever which is required) approach. Unlike earlier work, the proposed MAC design includes load estimation for network load-status awareness and a multi-hop communication pattern in order to prevent energy loss associated with long range transmission. Finally, ATLAS is evaluated through extensive simulations in ns-2 and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the protocol

Game Theory-Based Cooperation for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks: Taxonomy, Review, Research Challenges and Directions.

Exploring and monitoring the underwater world using underwater sensors is drawing a lot of attention these days. In this field cooperation between acoustic sensor nodes has been a critical problem due to the challenging features such as acoustic channel failure (sound signal), long propagation delay of acoustic signal, limited bandwidth and loss of connectivity. There are several proposed methods to improve cooperation between the nodes by incorporating information/game theory in the node's cooperation. However, there is a need to classify the existing works and demonstrate their performance in addressing the cooperation issue. In this paper, we have conducted a review to investigate various factors affecting cooperation in underwater acoustic sensor networks. We study various cooperation techniques used for underwater acoustic sensor networks from different perspectives, with a concentration on communication reliability, energy consumption, and security and present a taxonomy for underwater cooperation. Moreover, we further review how the game theory can be applied to make the nodes cooperate with each other. We further analyze different cooperative game methods, where their performance on different metrics is compared. Finally, open issues and future research direction in underwater acoustic sensor networks are highlighted

A Polygon Model for Wireless Sensor Network Deployment with Directional Sensing Areas

The modeling of the sensing area of a sensor node is essential for the deployment algorithm of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, a polygon model is proposed for the sensor node with directional sensing area. In addition, a WSN deployment algorithm is presented with topology control and scoring mechanisms to maintain network connectivity and improve sensing coverage rate. To evaluate the proposed polygon model and WSN deployment algorithm, a simulation is conducted. The simulation results show that the proposed polygon model outperforms the existed disk model and circular sector model in terms of the maximum sensing coverage rate