A Novel Secure Routing Protocol for MANETs

Abstract

Mobile Ad Hoc Network(MANETs)is a promising new wireless communications paradigm, with two features that there is no need to have a centralized server and the mobility of the network device, which enable the network devices move around and end hosts may function as a router. The key of successful deployments of MANETs requires us to properly address the security problem. Although many research focus on how to deliver packets from one node to another, research into the security issue will surely overtake the trend and play the leading role. Current techniques of addressing security on the fixed structured wired network are only useful to protect the transmitted message on the end nodes, the security of routing information among the mobile nodes in the hostile environment where mobile Ad Hoc networks are usually used has been inadequately addressed. Security and routing on the wired networks have been treated separately due to that the security issue is concerned with how to defend nodes from hackers attack, while routing is about how to efficiently determine optimal routes. Recent research shown that the security and routing on the MANETs need to be considered altogether, that is, the routing needs to be done with the capability of preventing various attacks from compromised or malicious nodes. Towards a practical solution, we propose a secure routing protocol for MANETs, which takes account of the two issues as one whole during the process of determining optimal routes. The new routing scheme, which is reliant on the use of fuzzy logic, is capable of determining the most secure route during the routing discovery. Similar to the AODV or SAODV in the route discovery, the algorithm will decide a secure path among all the possible routing paths based on the knowledge about its neighbor nodes. The nodes will forward or reply the route with the highest security level. The feasibility of the proposed scheme of secure routing is demonstrated by using simulation technology on NS2. In addition, the performance of the new secure routing protocol on the simulation experiments are presented.