Securing ad hoc networks. Mechanisms and techniques
- Autores: Helena Rifà Pous
- Directores de la Tesis: Jordi Herrera Joancomartí (dir. tes.), Miquel Soriano Ibáñez (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2008
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: José Antonio Domingo (presid.), Jordi Forné Muñoz (secret.), Jordi Castellà Roca (voc.), Pino Caballero Gil (voc.), Joan Borrell Viader (voc.)
- Materias:
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- Resumen
This thesis presents a study about security mechanisms and techniques to develop reliable and functional ad hoc networks. Ad hoc networks are characterized for being composed of heterogeneous devices that temporarily join, in a spontaneous fashion, without the need of network infrastructure devices. Hence, end terminals are responsible of network management operations like addressing, virtual topology organization, routing and packet forwarding. Carrying out theses processes and setting out a self- organizing network, requires the joint work of all network members. However, the nodes of the network are autonomous and independent ones from the others and so, they can not be trusted for the collaborative correct execution of critical network functions.
Therefore, the basic structure of the network is jeopardized. This is the base of the security threats that are specific to ad hoc networks. This work deals with different aspects for protecting network layer protocols for ad hoc networks through cryptographic based solutions. First, we present a benchmark study of cryptographic algorithms over small devices. The results obtained in this part give us the framework to develop security protocols that best suit the characteristics of an ad hoc network. The second part of the document addresses the problem of ensuring the discovery of correct transmission paths between any two peers of the network. In the general case, ad hoc networks are composed of wireless devices with a limited transmission scope, so multihop paths have to be established for being able to connect remote peers. Designing a protocol that guarantees the veracity of discovered routing tables without introducing too much overhead is essential for deploying ad hoc networks.
In the third part of this thesis a discussion about threats and challenges for managing hierarchical ad hoc networks is presented.
When ad hoc networks grow in size it may be costless, in the global sense, to be organized in clusters in a similar way than cellular networks. In these kinds of architectures there is a node in the cluster that takes a critical role, the clusterhead or leader of the cluster. Because being a clusterhead implies spending a lot of owns resources for the community benefit, but on the other hand it also reports in the accumulation of sensible information about the location and activity of node members, the election of the clusterheads of a network have to be fair and transparent. A novel protocol to handle this problem is proposed.
Finally, the fourth and last part of this work presents a study on cooperation mechanisms to encourage users to participate in the basic infrastructure functions of the network, in particular, forwarding packets. The main interest is being able to deploy networks that offer high throughput and permit operating with a wide range of advanced services. In this work, new strategies are presented that motivate the participation of users rewarding the most cooperative ones with greater availability and better quality of service channels.
