Surveying Solutions to Securing On-Demand Routing Protocols in MANETs

TL;DR

This survey reviews security challenges in on-demand routing protocols for MANETs, analyzing threats and various proposed solutions to enhance security in these decentralized wireless networks.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of security threats and evaluates existing solutions and modifications for on-demand routing protocols in MANETs.

Findings

Identifies major security threats to MANET routing protocols.

Analyzes effectiveness of proposed security solutions.

Highlights gaps and future directions in securing MANET routing.

Abstract

A Mobile ad hoc Network or MANET is a wireless network of mobile devices that has the ability to self-configure and self-organise and is characterised by an absence of centralised administration and network infrastructure. An appreciable number of routing protocols used in a typical MANET have left the critical aspect of security out of consideration by assuming that all of its constituent nodes are trustworthy and non-malicious. In this paper, we discuss some of the major threats that such networks are vulnerable to, because of these inherently insecure protocols. The focus is specifically on the source-initiated and on-demand routing protocols. Further, solutions and modifications to these protocols that have been proposed over time, enabling them to mitigate the aforementioned threats to some extent, are also analysed.