Energy-Aware Secure Routing for Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks

Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks (HWMNs) were proposed to address the challenges in wireless communications to support mobile applications across different domains. Due to the multi-hop and decentralized network architecture HWMNs are naturally susceptible to various security threats, especially internal attacks. Therefore HWMNs must be able to detect anomalies, provide secure routing and protect user privacy through the cooperation among nodes. However, the existing routing protocols for HWMNs cannot ensure the security to protect the user privacy effectively as these networks are vulnerable to internal attacks. Moreover, few of the existing protocols have taken into account energy consumption for routing. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes a secure and energy-aware green routing (PSGR) protocol to defend against internal attacks, to achieve stronger privacy protection and to reduce energy consumption in HWMNs. Simulation results demonstrate a superior performance of PSGR in terms of network throughput and energy efficiency compared to the existing PA-SHWMP and HWMP protocols in the presence of Blackhole/Grayhole attacks and wormhole attacks.