Secure and fault-tolerant communication in mobile ad hoc networks

• Authors: Zygmunt J. Haas;Panagiotis Papadimitratos
• Venue: Secure and fault-tolerant communication in mobile ad hoc networks
• Year: 2005

This dissertation proposes a protocol suite to secure communication in mobile ad hoe networks (MANETs); it addresses the security of the route discovery and the security of the data communication. To secure the route discovery, it proposes the Secure Routing Protocol (SRP), a reactive routing protocol suitable for a broad range of MANETs. SRP operates in an end-to-end manner without restrictive assumptions on network trust and security associations. Low route discovery delay can be achieved, with low network and processing overhead, even when a significant fraction of the network nodes disrupt the route discovery. SRP interoperates the Neighbor Lookup Protocol (NLP) to provide localized authentication. Its operation can be complemented by the Secure Link State Protocol (SLSP), with the two protocols combined in a hybrid routing scheme or used independently. To secure the data communication, this work proposes the Secure Message Transmission (SMT ) and the Secure Single Path (SSP) protocols. Among the salient features of the SMT and SSP protocols is their ability to operate solely in an end-to-end manner and without restrictive assumptions on the network trust and security associations. As a result, the protocols are applicable to a wide range of network architectures. Highly reliable communication can be sustained with small delay and delay variability, even when a substantial portion of the network nodes systematically or randomly disrupt communication. The protocols robustly detect transmission failures and continuously configure their operation to avoid and tolerate data loss, and thus ensure the availability of communication. This is achieved at the expense of moderate transmission and routing overhead, which can be traded off for delay. Moreover, the ability of the protocols to mitigate both malicious and benign faults allows fast and reliable data transport even in highly adverse network environments.