A secure on-demand source routing scheme using hierarchical clustering in mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), since all of the nodes communicate each other based on the routing protocol, and an attacker could manipulate a lower-level protocol to interrupt a security mechanism in a higher-level one, securing routing protocol is an important issue in MANETs. Recently, there exist several proposals that attempt to develop a secure routing protocol for MANETs. However, those methods are not actually secure against a variety of attacks, including the Sybil, wormhole, black hole, replay, blackmail, denial of service, and routing table poisoning attacks. Therefore, in this paper we design a secure hierarchical-clustering-based routing scheme using the self-certified public key cryptosystem, elliptic curve cryptosystem, pre-hashing, and nonce techniques against such attacks. Finally, we also analyze the advantages of our proposed scheme in terms of security and superiority.