A multilevel platform for secure communications in a fleet of mobile phones

The work presented in this paper targets MANets composed of mobile phones which are possibly equipped with different wireless technologies. These nodes operate in a totally decentralized and unplanned manner by communicating with each other via peer-to-peer wireless technologies. In this particular context, the multi-technology capabilities of the mobile phones should be used efficiently to increase and diversify their peer-to-peer capacities. Therefore we have defined a dedicated multilevel platform that allows a set of mobile nodes to communicate securely in peer-to-peer mode by using the most appropriate approach depending on the context (costs and/or preferences of the entities). This paper is organized as follows. We first present the characteristics that we consider significant to build a proper model of the system. We then give an overview of the solutions that we have proposed for the main operations within our multilevel platform. Finally, we describe a mobile application that we have developed and present the performance analysis that we have conducted.