Randomized multipath routing protocol for secure data transmission in wireless IP-over-WDM networks

Abstract

Wireless WDM networks are composed of autonomous WDM nodes that are often deployed in unattended environment, thus leaving them vulnerable to capture and compromised by an adversary. One of the major challenges that wireless WDM networks face today is security. In this paper, we consider two types of security attacks namely node replication attack and black hole attack. In node replication attack, the attacker obtains network information from WDM nodes and generates replicas back into the network. Using a distributed approach replica nodes are detected with the help of witness nodes that are randomly selected from the network. Another security attack that occurs in wireless WDM networks is black hole attack, which absorbs all data packets in the network. For secure data delivery in the network, a randomized multipath routing mechanism is proposed, in which multiple paths are computed in a randomized way such that set of routes taken by shares of different packets changes over time which ultimately makes adversary difficult in finding routes traversed by each packet.