Security in multicast mobile ad-hoc networks

A Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of autonomous nodes or terminals which communicate with each other by forming a multi-hop radio network and maintaining connectivity in a decentralized manner. Nodes in ad-hoc networks play both the roles of routers and terminals. Moreover, the routing path in ad-hoc networks is dynamic; it is not fixed as in wired networks. Therefore, some security mechanisms used in wired networks cannot simply be applied to protocols in ad-hoc networks. After analyzing various types of attacks against ad-hoc networks, a secure scheme for the famous routing protocol, MAODV (Multicast Ad-hoc On-Demand distance Vector routing protocol) is proposed. To guarantee the integrity in ad-hoc networks, Secure Hash Algorithm-1 (SHA-1) is used. Furthermore, NS2 (Network Simulator) software is used to simulate this scheme and performance analysis are made.