Time stamp based Cross layer MANET security protocol

Mobile Adhoc NETwork (MANET) is a wireless network where nodes communicate through other nodes without the aid of a base station. Security is a major challenge in MANET as the packets are prone vulnerability and eavesdropping in wireless environment. Generally MAC layer provides the security in such wireless network through encryption and authentication and the protocol is called WEP. Many authentication and encryption techniques are proposed to increase the security of the MANET. But stronger Security leads to more energy loss as mobiles have less energy and limited processing capability. In this work a Cross layer timestamp based network security technique is developed. The technique reduces the encryption packet overflow which is due to PKE or public key exchange, and derives the public key directly from the neighbor's table which is transmitted using routing information exchange. The simulation is performed with omnet++ simulator. Performance results demonstrate that the energy overhead due to encryption or performance compromise are very low in the proposed system. Further as the protocol is embedded in the network layer it is easily adoptable to any existing architecture without modifying the MAC or Physical layer standard or protocol.