Wireless ad hoc networks: Where security, real-time and lifetime meet

This paper deals with the multihop nature of wireless ad hoc networks where security, real-time and lifetime meet. We propose a hierarchical communication model to study how medium access control and network energy signatures provide opportunities for power-efficient partitioning of communication links. We show possibilities to integrate multihop services into routing protocols. At the same time, malicious nodes included in a routing path may misbehave and the paper analyzes vulnerable points in case of communication attacks. The REWARD algorithm for secure routing is used as a main example for corrective actions. Nodes listen to neighbor transmissions to detect black hole attacks. The energy overhead is broken down into static, the additional energy required to watch for attacks, and dynamic, which is application specific. We evaluate the static energy overhead associated with symmetrical routing.