Mobile Ad Hoc Network Security Technology Research

Wireless networks provide mobile users with the capability of information access as well as connection maintenance at anytime and anywhere. A wired backbone is often designed to carry the information transmitted among the base stations and mobile users can be connected to a network via base stations in traditional mobile communication systems. A mobile Ad Hoc network (MANET) is a special wireless network that is self-organized by mobile nodes communicating with each other by running distributed protocols. MANET can work without fixed infrastructures, such as base stations. When wired networks are not available, as in battlefield communication and emergency search-and-rescue scenarios, MANETs provide a feasible way for communication and information access.Security is essential for MANET, and it is also one of the hot areas in MANET research nowadays. Currently, the major sub-areas of security research include secure routing; secure group communications; intrusion detection, authentication and group key management etc. After these researches being studied and analyzed, the following defects show in these security mechanisms: depending on network's topology; performance can be improved more in the wireless network with limited power and bandwith; relying on circularly etc. Therefore, this paper is with a view to the influence of mobility of nodes, route security and group key agreement protocol to research the security of MANETs. The achievements are as follows:1. Mobility of mobile nodes is studied. The results show that far from being a hurdle, mobility can be exploited to set up security associations among users to help peer-to-peer security. As is shown in this paper, there are three mechanisms to establish security association when the nodes are in the vicinity of each other. Finally, a detailed performance analysis is provided by two methods: one is mathematical description; the other is simulation result in C++.2. By studying group communication mechanism, especially the group key agreement protocol deeply, this paper points out the problems in generation, distribution and updating of group key in these existing protocols. Based on these studies, a new Hierarchical Group Key Agreement Protocol is advanced. It is proved a...