| Cooperative communication is considered a promising technique for both infrastructure-based networks like cellular systems and IEEE 802.16j, and for infrastructure-less networks like mobile ad hoc networks. However, it also raises serious security issues as the communication approach is dependent upon the integrity of the relays. In this thesis, a prevention-based security technique for cooperative communication is proposed taking into consideration authentication protocol, based on hash chains and Merkle trees, along with throughput quality of service (QoS) optimization making use of physical layer parameters. The proposed Joint Authentication and QoS Scheme (JAQS) is implemented to select the best relay proactively considering both end-to-end and hop-by-hop authentication and integrity protection, and to confirm the identity of the node and the integrity of the message during the transmission process. An integrated design approach is taken to optimize the number of messages in the Merkle tree, an important parameter in the authentication scheme, and relay selection in cooperative communication networks. As part of our work, we derive closed-form secured throughput equations defining the time constituents taking into consideration error control schemes. We present simulation results to show that the proposed relay selection scheme, which provides authentication and integrity protection, outperforms the existing relay selection scheme based on outage capacity in terms of throughput performance. |
