Safeguarding cooperation in Synergy MAC

Cooperative communication is a novel, diversity-improving technique that holds great promise for the future of wireless networks. But in order to fully exploit this diversity realized at the physical layer, the idea of node cooperation needs to be extended to other layers of the protocol stack as well. Synergy MAC is one such extension to the MAC sublayer. As per this protocol, whenever a source intends to transmit some data to the destination, it solicits the support of its neighbors for the ensuing data transfer. When one a willing neighbor is identified as the relay, the source transmits its data to the destination by forwarding it via the enlisted relay. In doing this, not only does Synergy MAC realize spatial diversity but is also able to achieve faster transmission speeds. However, relay assisted two hop transmission in Synergy MAC gives rise to numerous concerns about its security. To address these concerns, appropriate security schemes need to be adapted to suit Synergy MAC. In this paper, we discuss various security issues introduced by cooperation in Synergy MAC and utilize two security schemes to address those problems. The techniques that are discussed here enable popular security schemes like WEP, WPA and WPA2 to successfully operate with Synergy MAC.