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

Applications of Repeated Games in Wireless Networks: A Survey

A repeated game is an effective tool to model interactions and conflicts for players aiming to achieve their objectives in a long-term basis. Contrary to static noncooperative games that model an interaction among players in only one period, in repeated games, interactions of players repeat for multiple periods; and thus the players become aware of other players' past behaviors and their future benefits, and will adapt their behavior accordingly. In wireless networks, conflicts among wireless nodes can lead to selfish behaviors, resulting in poor network performances and detrimental individual payoffs. In this paper, we survey the applications of repeated games in different wireless networks. The main goal is to demonstrate the use of repeated games to encourage wireless nodes to cooperate, thereby improving network performances and avoiding network disruption due to selfish behaviors. Furthermore, various problems in wireless networks and variations of repeated game models together with the corresponding solutions are discussed in this survey. Finally, we outline some open issues and future research directions.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, 168 reference

Cross-layer Design for Wireless Mesh Networks with Advanced Physical and Network Layer Techniques

Cross-layer optimization is an essential tool for designing wireless network protocols. We present a cross-layer optimization framework for wireless networks where at each node, various smart antenna techniques such as beam-forming, spatial division multiple access and spatial division multiplexing are employed. These techniques provide interference suppression, capability for simultaneous communication with several nodes and transmission with higher data rates, respectively. By integrating different combinations of these multi-antenna techniques in physical layer with various constraints from MAC and network layers, three Mixed Integer Linear Programming models are presented to minimize the scheduling period. Since these optimization problems are combinatorially complex, the optimal solution is approached by a Column Generation (CG) decomposition method. Our numerical results show that the resulted directive, multiple access and multiplexing gains combined with scheduling, effectively increase both the spatial reuse and the capacity of the links and therefore enhance the achievable system throughput. The introduced cross-layer approach is also extended to consider heterogeneous networks where we present a multi-criteria optimization framework to model the design problem with an objective of jointly minimizing the cost of deployment and the scheduling period. Our results reveal the significant benefits of this joint design method. We also investigate the achievable performance gain that network coding (with opportunistic listening) when combined with Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) brings to a multi-hop wireless network. We develop a cross-layer formulation in which SIC enables concurrent receptions from multiple transmitters and network coding reduces the transmission time-slot for minimizing the scheduling time. To solve this combinatorially complex non-linear problem, we decompose it to two linear sub-problems; namely opportunistic network coding aware routing, and scheduling sub-problems. Our results affirm our expectation for a remarkable performance improvement when both techniques are jointly used. Further, we develop an optimization model for combining SIC with power control (PC). Our model optimally adjusts the transmission power of nodes to avoid interference on unintended receivers and properly embraces undesired interference through SIC. Therefore, it provides a balance between usage of PC and SIC at the transmitting and receiving sides, respectively. Our results show considerable throughput improvement in dense and heavily loaded networks

Constructive Relay based Cooperative Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

PhDMobile Ad hoc networks (MANETs) are flexible networks that transmit packets node-by-node along a route connecting a given source and destination. Frequent link breaks (due to node mobility) and quick exhaustion of energy (due to limited battery capacity) are two major problems impacting on the flexibility of MANETs. Cooperative communication is a key concept for improving the system lifetime and robustness and has attracted considerable attention. As a result, there is much published research concerning how to utilize cooperative communication in a MANET context. In the past few years, most cooperative technologies have focused on lower layer enhancements, such as with the Physical Layer and MAC Layer, and have become very mature. At the Network Layer, although some research has been proposed, issues still remain such as the lack of a systematically designed cooperative routing scheme (including route discovery, route reply, route enhancement and cooperative data forwarding), the use of cooperative communication for mobility resilience, and route selection (jointly considering the energy consumption, energy harvesting potential and link break probability). Driven by the above concerns, a novel Constructive Relay based CooPerative Routing (CRCPR) protocol based on a cross-layer design is proposed in this thesis. In CRCPR, we fi rst modify the traditional hello message format to carry some additional neighbour information. Based on this information, a key aspect of this protocol is to construct one or more small rhombus topologies within the MANET structure, which are stored and maintained in a COoPerative (COP) Table and Relay Table. Next, the route request procedure is re-designed to improve resilience to node mobility with a scheme called Last hop Replacement. Finally, assuming nodes are mostly battery-powered, destination node based route-decision criteria are explored that can consider energy consumption, energy harvesting and link break probability to determine an appropriate route across the MANET. As the hello message format is modi ed to carry additional information, the control overhead is increased. However, in order to improve the control message eficiency, a new generalised hello message broadcasting scheme entitled Adjust Classi ed Hello Scheme is developed, which can be deployed onto every routing protocol employing a hello mechanism. As well as designing a new routing protocol for MANETs, including route discovery, route selection, route reply, route maintenance, route enhancement and cooperative data forwarding, the proposed scheme is implemented within an Opnetbased simulation environment and evaluated under a variety of realistic conditions. The results con rm that CRCPR improves mobility resilience, saves energy via cooperative communication and reduces the control overhead associated with the hello message mechanism.Chinese Scholarship Counci

Instantly Decodable Network Coding: From Centralized to Device-to-Device Communications

From its introduction to its quindecennial, network coding has built a strong reputation for enhancing packet recovery and achieving maximum information flow in both wired and wireless networks. Traditional studies focused on optimizing the throughput of the system by proposing elaborate schemes able to reach the network capacity. With the shift toward distributed computing on mobile devices, performance and complexity become both critical factors that affect the efficiency of a coding strategy. Instantly decodable network coding presents itself as a new paradigm in network coding that trades off these two aspects. This paper review instantly decodable network coding schemes by identifying, categorizing, and evaluating various algorithms proposed in the literature. The first part of the manuscript investigates the conventional centralized systems, in which all decisions are carried out by a central unit, e.g., a base-station. In particular, two successful approaches known as the strict and generalized instantly decodable network are compared in terms of reliability, performance, complexity, and packet selection methodology. The second part considers the use of instantly decodable codes in a device-to-device communication network, in which devices speed up the recovery of the missing packets by exchanging network coded packets. Although the performance improvements are directly proportional to the computational complexity increases, numerous successful schemes from both the performance and complexity viewpoints are identified

Spectrum Sharing, Latency, and Security in 5G Networks with Application to IoT and Smart Grid

The surge of mobile devices, such as smartphones, and tables, demands additional capacity. On the other hand, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and smart grid, which connects numerous sensors, devices, and machines require ubiquitous connectivity and data security. Additionally, some use cases, such as automated manufacturing process, automated transportation, and smart grid, require latency as low as 1 ms, and reliability as high as 99.99\%. To enhance throughput and support massive connectivity, sharing of the unlicensed spectrum (3.5 GHz, 5GHz, and mmWave) is a potential solution. On the other hand, to address the latency, drastic changes in the network architecture is required. The fifth generation (5G) cellular networks will embrace the spectrum sharing and network architecture modifications to address the throughput enhancement, massive connectivity, and low latency. To utilize the unlicensed spectrum, we propose a fixed duty cycle based coexistence of LTE and WiFi, in which the duty cycle of LTE transmission can be adjusted based on the amount of data. In the second approach, a multi-arm bandit learning based coexistence of LTE and WiFi has been developed. The duty cycle of transmission and downlink power are adapted through the exploration and exploitation. This approach improves the aggregated capacity by 33\%, along with cell edge and energy efficiency enhancement. We also investigate the performance of LTE and ZigBee coexistence using smart grid as a scenario. In case of low latency, we summarize the existing works into three domains in the context of 5G networks: core, radio and caching networks. Along with this, fundamental constraints for achieving low latency are identified followed by a general overview of exemplary 5G networks. Besides that, a loop-free, low latency and local-decision based routing protocol is derived in the context of smart grid. This approach ensures low latency and reliable data communication for stationary devices. To address data security in wireless communication, we introduce a geo-location based data encryption, along with node authentication by k-nearest neighbor algorithm. In the second approach, node authentication by the support vector machine, along with public-private key management, is proposed. Both approaches ensure data security without increasing the packet overhead compared to the existing approaches

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

Smart Wireless Sensor Networks

The recent development of communication and sensor technology results in the growth of a new attractive and challenging area - wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A wireless sensor network which consists of a large number of sensor nodes is deployed in environmental fields to serve various applications. Facilitated with the ability of wireless communication and intelligent computation, these nodes become smart sensors which do not only perceive ambient physical parameters but also be able to process information, cooperate with each other and self-organize into the network. These new features assist the sensor nodes as well as the network to operate more efficiently in terms of both data acquisition and energy consumption. Special purposes of the applications require design and operation of WSNs different from conventional networks such as the internet. The network design must take into account of the objectives of specific applications. The nature of deployed environment must be considered. The limited of sensor nodes� resources such as memory, computational ability, communication bandwidth and energy source are the challenges in network design. A smart wireless sensor network must be able to deal with these constraints as well as to guarantee the connectivity, coverage, reliability and security of network's operation for a maximized lifetime. This book discusses various aspects of designing such smart wireless sensor networks. Main topics includes: design methodologies, network protocols and algorithms, quality of service management, coverage optimization, time synchronization and security techniques for sensor networks