A cluster based secure routing scheme for wireless ad hoc networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, frequent topology changes and the absence of any centralized control make the networks vulnerable to many security attacks not present in a traditional wired network. Existing routing protocols offer little or no security to address these vulnerabilities. In this paper, we describe a security scheme based on the working of cluster based routing protocol (CBRP). Using threshold cryptography we eliminate the use of a centralized certification authority to distribute the process of certification among the nodes of the network. We make use of a combination of public key and symmetric key cryptography for authentication and exchange of data. This approach can as well be easily extended to other hierarchical routing protocols.