Routing, security, resource management, and monitoring in ad hoc networks: Implementation and integration

  • Authors:

  • George C. Hadjichristofi;Luiz A. DaSilva;Scott F. Midkiff;Unghee Lee;Waltemar De Sousa

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus;Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA and CTVR, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland;Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA;Scalable Network Technologies, Los Angeles, California, USA;Scalable Network Technologies, Los Angeles, California, USA

  • Venue:
  • Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

In this paper we present the implementation and integration of core network functions, including routing, security, resource management, and network monitoring that are critical to the efficient operation of a mobile ad hoc network (MANET). The integration of the aforementioned functionalities enables them to support one another, forming a cohesive system. We design and implement a new ad hoc routing protocol that can relay connectivity, link quality, or any other information that is globally available to the underlying routing mechanism and use such information to improve routing decisions. Our implementation of resource management and topology control utilizes the connectivity information from the routing protocol to derive topologies that consume less energy and cause less interference. Our key management solution supports IPsec deployment and establishes secure paths enabling secure information propagation for routing and topology control messages, as well as for application data. Moreover, it provides an integrated trust component that can guide trust decisions among nodes in a network. To debug and monitor these core functionalities we implement both centralized and decentralized network monitoring solutions, which in turn extract and display information, such as connectivity and secure tunnels, from our security, routing, and topology control solutions. Routing, security, and monitoring mechanisms support concurrent use of IPv6 and IPv4 addresses. We briefly describe each component of the solution and discuss the integration of these components into a unified system to support mobile nodes. We describe experiments conducted on a wireless ad hoc network testbed and thus illustrate the interaction between the various technologies. Concluding, we discuss lessons learned and how we make available our implementations to enable further experimentation by the wireless network research community.