Energy aware Secure Clustering in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) suffer from security attacks and privacy issues, which dramatically impede their applications. In addition, the security measures applied in MANETs (like encryption and key distribution) have a number of negative effects on the network´s performance. Cryptographic operations introduce a lot of both CPU and communication overhead. Therefore, routing protocols improvement is a challenge for researchers to overcome the negative effects of security measures. Clustering the MANET is a known technique to lower the routing over-head. It can also be utilized to distribute encryption keys and the authentication process. In this paper, a new protocol called Secure Clustering and Energy Saver Protocol “SCESP” is proposed. SCESP secures the Mobile Ad hoc Networks and increase its network lifetime. This system introduces a novel self-node clustering technique based on Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector “AODV” routing protocol. In addition, it eliminates the key distribution overhead using smart token or similar hardware which is used for authentication. The SCESP system succeeded to enhance the security level of MANETs and decrease the battery consumption of mobile nodes due to the transmitted and received route requests messages propagated to discover new routes in AODV routing protocol.