Towards a flexible security management solution for dynamic MANETs

Since MANETs are mainly composed of lightweight devices with limited capabilities, efficiently manage security is crucial to reduce the performance degradation and resources consumption. Actually, managing MANETspsila security is a hard challenge due to the inherent complexity and the tremendous number of parameters which should be considered. To provide efficient security management, we focus on three main parameters: the secured device capabilities, the associated network security and the secured applications. The solution we propose, named Adaptive Secured Multipath for Ad hoc networks (ASMA) is a scalable, flexible and application-oriented framework able to manage security depending on the application requirements and the network security conditions. ASMA is based on a structure called macrograph combining both dynamic trust management and multipath routing. The macrograph structure is capable to estimate transmission security in order to assure that communications are established only when they match applications security requirements. ASMA flexibility offers compliance with most on-demand routing protocols and security tools. In this paper we present simulation results for ASMA associated with AOMDV (a multipath declination of AODV) routing protocol and compare results with AOMDV. We show that ASMA-AOMDV outperforms AOMDV, dividing by three the packet loss rate in networks including 20% of malicious nodes, while causing only 3% of additional loss in safe networks.