Methods for Securing Routing Protocols in Ad-Hoc Networks

The ad-hoc networks are wireless networks formed spontaneously between certain devices (computers, sensors, mobile phones and others) with limited resources (battery, memory, processing power) that doesn´t have a central routing device (router) and so each node must ensure also this function. In addition, the network structure changes dynamically as needed. Because of these characteristics, the routing protocols developed for ad-hoc networks raise many security issues. In this paper we will review some of these problems and we propose some methods to improve their security. The main protocols studied in this paper are AODV (Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing) and OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing Protocol). We will also analyze the impact of our changes on the performance of the above listed protocols. The analyze will be performed using the OPNET Modeler network simulator.