A Communication-Efficient Secure Routing Protocol for IoT Networks

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Network Security
• Wireless Communication

Background:

• Secure routing protocols are crucial for ad hoc networks.
• Conventional secure protocols often suffer from low communication efficiency due to large packet sizes from digital signatures, especially in large networks.
• Existing methods struggle to balance security with efficient data transmission.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel secure routing protocol that enhances communication efficiency in ad hoc networks.
• To address the limitations of conventional protocols regarding packet size and intermediate node participation.
• To achieve both robust security and high communication performance.

Main Methods:

• Development of a secure routing protocol based on the Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol.
• Implementation of a mechanism allowing intermediate nodes to initiate route replies (RRPs) using ID-based signatures.
• Nodes store past packet information to facilitate signed RRP generation.
• Theoretical analysis and practical implementation using Raspberry Pi and C language for performance evaluation.

Main Results:

• The proposed protocol significantly improves communication efficiency compared to conventional secure protocols.
• Theoretical evaluations confirm superior performance.
• Practical measurements show an average routing time improvement of over 3x with 30 relay nodes in a 300 sqm area.
• Reduced routing time by combining communication and cryptographic calculation times.

Conclusions:

• The proposed secure routing protocol effectively enhances communication efficiency in ad hoc networks.
• The novel approach of enabling intermediate nodes to send signed RRPs overcomes limitations of traditional methods.
• The protocol offers a practical and efficient solution for secure communication in large-scale wireless ad hoc networks.