Continuous authentication of multicast routing for ad-hoc networks

Ad-hoc networks are becoming an effective tool for many mission critical applications such as troop coordination in a combat field, situational awareness, etc. These applications are characterized by the hostile environment that they serve in and by the multicast-style of communication traffic. Therefore, authenticating the source and ensuring the integrity of the message traffic become a fundamental requirement for the operation and management of the network. However, the limited computation and communication resources, the large scale deployment and the unguaranteed connectivity to trusted authorities make known solutions for wired and single-hop wireless networks inappropriate. This work focus on providing Continuous Authentication for Multicast traffic for large scale dense ad-hoc networks. The continuous authentication combines the advantages of the time asymmetry and the secret information asymmetry paradigms in order to avoid message loss and provide data security. This work focus on network clustering scheme to reduce overhead due to computation and ensure scalability. Multicast traffic in a cluster employs message authentication codes (MACs) that are based on a set of keys in order to authenticate the message source. Message authentication codes (MACs) are based on a set of keys. Each cluster uses a unique subset of keys to look for its distinct combination of valid MACs in the message in order to authenticate the source. The confidentiality of source is provided by using RSA and DES algorithm during cross-cluster message transfer.