Performance Evaluation of a Hybrid Cryptosystem with Authentication for Wireless Ad hoc Networks

Though wireless networks provide great convenience to mobile users, they also give rise to non-trivial concerns about the security due to open channels and flexible mobility. An important concern is the securing of a communication link between any pair of nodes. Here, data encryption is deemed the primary solution to protect data confidentiality and integrity. However, the issue of traditional cryptographic techniques' application in wireless and mobile networks is significant to improve the performance of networks. In this article, we propose a hybrid encryption algorithm to deal with the applications of symmetric key and asymmetric key in wireless ad hoc networks. In particular, a public key is used as an authentication method to validate the identity of a legitimate node and to prevent unwanted parties from obtaining unauthorized data and resources. Our performance comparison shows that our proposed schemes have reasonable computational costs and communication overhead, provide reliable security, and at the same time, improve the efficiency of cryptographic techniques. In this way, our simulation results indicate that our algorithm is effective and practical for the data protection in wireless and mobile networks.