Multi-path Mutual Anonymous Source Routing (M~2ASR)

Due to the nature of radio transmissions, communications in wireless ad hoc networks are easy to capture and analyze. Anonymity mechanisms in ad hoc networks are critical security measures used to mitigate this problem by concealing identification information and network topology information from harmful attackers. But there are a number of drawbacks in the already proposed ad hoc network routing protocols, such as less efficiency, or unable to provide full anonymity etc.In this paper we present a new multi-path mutual anonymous source routing protocol M 2ASR , which originates from the protocol DSR,MSR and MPLS, and also the algorithm IDA which is the first time IDA is used in a routing protocol for wireless ad hoc network. M 2ASR adapts to much more larger wireless ad hoc networks, and also provides anonymity by modifying the work flow of routing discovery of protocol DSR and adopting label switches like what used in the MPLS. Meanwhile, multi-path and IDA make the protocol much more efficiency on resource utility and also resist failures caused by single path.It is showed by theoretical analysis and also simulation on the JiST-SWANS simulation platform that M 2ASR provides anonymity to the packet sender, receiver and also the intermediate nodes which forward the packet, including identity anonymity, topology anonymity and routing anonymity. Also, efficiency of M 2ASR is improved due to the modification on the process of routing discovery, and application of multi-path and IDA.