Path Optimization Techniques for Trusted Routing in Tactical Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Over the past decade a lot of research effort has been invested in trying to understand security principles for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs). Among the various problems that the research community has focussed, a particularly interesting problem is that of trusted routing in MANETs. Unlike in traditional networks like the Internet, the information flow in a MANET is not restricted to a certain class of routing nodes. The MANETs are different in this sense, because every node acts as a potential relay node. Thus for the proper functioning of any higher layer protocols in MANETs it is of paramount importance that the mobile ad hoc nodes co-operate in routing and forwarding. In many practical scenarios where MANETs are deployed, it might be advantageous for individual nodes not to participate in this forwarding game. Thus one might expect under an unsupervised or unmonitored scenario, the network essentially breaks into components with similar interest groups. This raises the major issue of connectivity in a MANET which is a primitive requirement for the routing layer. Thus securing the network from self-interest groups is inherently coupled with the security of the routing layer. This particular observation has spawned several interesting works in the recent past.