Secure Antnet Routing Algorithm for Scalable Adhoc Networks Using Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Abstract

The secure end-to-end route discovery in the decentralized Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs) should have to meet the requirements of prevention of DoS attacks on data traffic, should be adaptive and fault tolerant and must have high speed, low energy overhead and scalability for future development. In this research a secure routing using antnet mechanism and mutual authentication using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) has been proposed to meet the above requirements. The common perception of public key cryptography is that it is not well suited for adhoc networks as they are very complex and slow. Against this popular belief, this research implements Elliptic Curve Cryptography -a public key cryptography scheme. ECC provides a similar level of security to conventional integer-based public-key algorithms, but with much shorter keys. Because of the shorter keys ECC algorithms run faster, require less space and consume less energy. These advantages make ECC a better choice of public key cryptography, especially for a resource constrained systems like MANETs. Using the antnet routing algorithm, the highly trustable route will be selected for data transfer and each Mobile Node (MN) in MANET maintains the trust value of its one-hop neighbors. The mutual authentication between source and destination is done by master key exchange using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).