Security in mobile ad hoc networks: challenges and solutions

TLDR

Security is a primary concern for protecting communication among mobile nodes in hostile environments, and the open peer‑to‑peer architecture, shared wireless medium, resource constraints, and dynamic topology of MANETs create unique challenges that demand multifaceted security solutions balancing protection and performance. This article investigates how to safeguard multihop connectivity in mobile ad hoc networks. The authors identify key security issues, analyze design challenges, and survey state‑of‑the‑art proposals that secure link‑ and network‑layer operations while advocating a comprehensive solution covering prevention, detection, and reaction.

Abstract

Security has become a primary concern in order to provide protected communication between mobile nodes in a hostile environment. Unlike the wireline 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. These challenges clearly make a case for building multifence security solutions that achieve both broad protection and desirable network performance. In this article we focus on the fundamental security problem of protecting the multihop network connectivity between 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. The complete security solution should span both layers, and encompass all three security components of prevention, detection, and reaction.