Distributed Beamforming Relay Selection to Increase Base Station Anonymity in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Wireless ad hoc networks have become valuable assets to both the commercial and military communities with applications ranging from industrial control on a factory floor to reconnaissance of a hostile border. In most applications, nodes act as data sources and forward information to a central base station (BS) that may also perform network management tasks. The critical role of the BS makes it a target for an adversary's attack. Even if an ad hoc network employs conventional security primitives such as encryption and authentication, an adversary can apply traffic analysis techniques to find the BS. Therefore, the BS should be kept anonymous to protect its identity, role, and location. Previous work has demonstrated distributed beamforming to be an effective technique to boost BS anonymity in wireless ad hoc networks; however, the increased anonymity and corresponding energy consumption depend on the quality and quantity of selected helper relays. In this paper we present a novel, distributed approach for determining a set of relays per hop that boosts BS anonymity using evidence theory analysis while minimizing energy consumption. The identified relay set is further prioritized using local wireless channel statistics. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness our approach.