A robust and secure data transmission scheme based on identity-based cryptosystem for ad hoc networks

Abstract

The ad hoc networks are forming a network without any fixed infrastructure and the network topology can change dynamically. Ad hoc networks, in which established infrastructure such as switches, routers and base stations or centralized administration are unnecessary, are an important emerging area of mobile computing. Each mobile node in these networks acts as a router and is responsible for cooperatively determining the path of other nodes to a particular destination. It provides high mobility and has advantage of operating without hardware deployment. Moreover, due to some characteristics of ad hoc networks, such as dynamic topology, limited bandwidth, mobile nodes resources limiting, limited physical security, multi-hop routing, energy restriction, etc, the security issues of ad hoc networks are getting more and more important. The essential problem is how we can make sure that all users in the ad hoc network are legal users and ensure the security of transmission data. However, the security in ad hoc networks is hard to achieve due to the limited physical protection to the nodes, lack of the computational ability and limited power. Thus, in this paper, we propose a robust and secure data transmission scheme, based on identity-based cryptosystem, elliptic curve cryptography and hash chains, to satisfy the routing security and data secrecy requirements for mobile nodes' communication over ad hoc networks.