Mobile Ad hoc networks security: Challenges and solutions

Abstract

Security plays a very important role in order to provide protected communication between mobile nodes in a hostile environment. Unlike the wire line networks, the unique characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks pose a number of nontrivial challenges to security design, such as open peer-to-peer network architecture, shared wireless medium, stringent resource constraints, and highly dynamic network topology. In this article only focus on the fundamental security problem of protecting the multi-hop network connectivity between mobile nodes in a MANET. Ad hoc networks are a wireless networking pattern for mobile Amphitryon. Unlike traditionary mobile wireless networks, ad hoc networks do not depend on any fixed infrastructure. Instead, these networks are self-configurable and self-governing systems which are able to support mobility and consolidated themselves arbitrarily. In this article only focus on the rudimentary security problem of protecting the multi-hop network connectivity among mobile nodes in a MANET. We identify the security issues related to this problem, discuss the challenges to security design, and review the state-of-the-art security proposals that protect the MANET link- and network-layer operations of delivering packets over the multihop wireless channel