A Survey of Secure Routing Protocols in Multi-Hop Cellular Networks

Abstract

Multi-hop networks are expected to be an important part of 5G mobile systems. In a multi-hop cellular network (MCN), the nodes assist each other in relaying packets towards their destinations. The structures and operations of multi-hop networks make them particularly vulnerable to certain types of attack. Hence, security measures to counter these attacks are necessary. In this paper, we provide an overview of the secure routing protocols for multi-hop networks and classify them into MCN Type-1 and Type-0 categories for device-to-device communications, and the Internet-of-Things category for machine-to-machine communications. Our focus is on the applied cryptographic techniques and the security mechanisms in secure routing protocols. We propose an evaluation framework incorporating different security aspects, vulnerabilities, and levels of deployability to compare a number of secure routing protocols. Moreover, we review the secure routing paths in software-defined networking as a solution for existing challenges in multi-hop networks. Some open research problems are highlighted as possible directions for future studies.