Turquois: Byzantine consensus in wireless ad hoc networks

The operation of wireless ad hoc networks is intrinsically tied to the ability of nodes to coordinate their actions in a dependable and efficient manner. The failure of some nodes and momentary breakdown of communications, either of accidental or malicious nature, should not result in the failure of the entire system. This paper presents Turquois - an intrusion-tolerant consensus protocol specifically designed for resource-constrained wireless ad hoc networks. Turquois allows an efficient utilization of the broadcasting medium, avoids synchrony assumptions, and refrains from public-key cryptography during its normal operation. The protocol is safe despite the arbitrary failure of f <; n/3 processes from a total of n processes, and unrestricted message omissions. The protocol was prototyped and subject to a comparative performance evaluation against two well-known intrusion-tolerant consensus protocols. The results show that, as the system scales, Turquois outperforms the other protocols by more than an order of magnitude.