A Rigorous Analysis of AODV and its Variants

TL;DR

This paper provides a formal, rigorous analysis of the AODV routing protocol using a process algebra, proving loop freedom and demonstrating adaptability to protocol variants in diverse network scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a formal specification of AODV in AWN, enabling generic correctness proofs and adaptable reasoning for protocol variants.

Findings

Proves loop freedom of AODV in all network scenarios.

Formalizes AODV's core functionalities in AWN.

Demonstrates adaptability of proofs to protocol variants.

Abstract

In this paper we present a rigorous analysis of the Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol using a formal specification in AWN (Algebra for Wireless Networks), a process algebra which has been specifically tailored for the modelling of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks and Wireless Mesh Network protocols. Our formalisation models the exact details of the core functionality of AODV, such as route discovery, route maintenance and error handling. We demonstrate how AWN can be used to reason about critical protocol correctness properties by providing a detailed proof of loop freedom. In contrast to evaluations using simulation or other formal methods such as model checking, our proof is generic and holds for any possible network scenario in terms of network topology, node mobility, traffic pattern, etc. A key contribution of this paper is the demonstration of how the reasoning and proofs can relatively easily be adapted to protocol variants.