Secured Identity Based Routing and privacy preservation in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have been expected to be the ultimate solution for the next decade wireless networking. The attractions of WMNs include easy set-up on the fly, off-the-shelf cost, flexible interoperability with other networks, and highly reliable connectivity. One main challenge in the design of these networks is their vulnerability to security attacks. The attacker will possibly be able to identify an ongoing communication session between any two network users by analyzing the network traffic pattern without knowing the user's identity information. To address these security risks, we propose a Secured Identity Based Routing (SIBR) scheme in which every node is assigned with the security cards for efficient authentication. The major goal of the proposed system is to reduce the number of levels at which an attack can take place by providing anonymity in routing. Our implementation results show that the proposed scheme increases the overall performance of the network substantially. Such a routing scheme enhances the privacy preservation of the end users. Our approach also protects against performance degradation even in the presence of malicious behavior.