A Secure MANET Routing Protocol for Crisis Situations

Emergency and rescue operations are often carried out in areas where the network infrastructure cannot be relied on for message exchange between first responders. Since a fundamental feature of a Mobile Ad Hoc Network is the ability to operate independently of existing infrastructure, it is deemed a well-suited solution to first responders scenarios. In this article, the authors describe a security extension to the OLSR routing protocol specifically designed for first responder scenarios. The proposed protocol provides node authentication and access control using asymmetric encryption and digital certificates, and also offers a secure group communication scheme. A link encryption scheme is devised to allow for efficient encryption of data even in broadcast mode, without the need for a network-wide shared key. By utilising pairwise symmetric keys for link confidentiality, the authors' solution is both efficient and scalable.