A Secure Distributed Anonymous Routing Protocol for Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

This paper proposes an efficient, anonymous and secure routing protocol considering symmetric and asymmetric communication models for Wireless Mesh Networks. A wireless mesh network is a group of wireless mesh routers and several kinds of wireless devices (or nodes) in which individual nodes cooperate by forwarding packets for each other to allow nodes to communicate beyond the symmetric or asymmetric model. Asymmetric communication is a special feature of Wireless Mesh Network because of the different wireless transmission ranges of wireless devices. The asymmetric communication model enhances Wireless Mesh Network coverage. Providing security and privacy in Wireless Mesh Networks has been an important issue over the last few years. Most of the research work has so far focused on providing security and anonymity for routing and data content in the symmetric communication model. Nothing has been done in regard to the asymmetric communication model over these networks. This paper proposes a novel distributed routing protocol beyond symmetric and asymmetric model, which guarantees security, anonymity and high reliability of the established route in a hostile environment, such as Wireless Mesh Networks, by abstaining from using unreliable intermediate nodes. The routes generated by the proposed protocol are shorter than those in prior works. The major objective of the proposed protocol is to allow trustworthy intermediate nodes to participate in the path construction protocol without jeopardizing the anonymity of the communicating nodes. The mesh clients out of mesh router wireless transmission range may anonymously discover a secure route to connect to the mesh router for Internet access via the proposed protocol. The proposed protocol enhances wireless mesh network coverage in assuring security and anonymity.