Security requirements to the routing information of a Adhoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol in Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANET)

Abstract: A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is an infrastructure less and autonomous network where a set of nodes are connected by wireless links where each node works both as a router and an end system. Due to vulnerable features of MANET it is prone to several attacks from insider as well as outsider. Routing is one of the most basic networking functions in mobile ad hoc networks. AODV is chosen as the best routing algorithm for MANET by IETF. It is best routing protocol in trusted environment, but in the presence of malicious node, compromised and selfish nodes several attacks can be launched against AODV, as there is no proper security to its routing information This paper is proposing security mechanism to protect the routing information of AODV. The security mechanism is using digital signature (MAC) and hash chain to the routing information. In hash chain a secure MD-5 algorithm is used. The proposed method is compared with the basic AODV routing protocol and proven to be the best. The analysis can be done using NS2 or GloMoSim network simulating tools. In this paper NS-2 is used.

Keywords: MANET, AODV, Digital signatures, MD-5 Hash function.