Insight to Research Progress on Secure Routing in Wireless Ad hoc Network

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Insight to Research Progress on Secure Routing in
Wireless Ad hoc Network
Jyoti Neeli
Dept of Information Science & Engineering
Global Academy of Technology
Bengaluru,
India
N K Cauvery
Professor & HOD
Dept. of Information Science of Engineering
RV College of Engineering,
Bengaluru, India
Abstract—Wireless Ad hoc Network offers a cost effective
communication to the users free from any infrastructural
dependencies. It is characterized by decentralized architecture,
mobile nodes, dynamic topology, etc. that makes the network
formation typically challenging. In the past decade, there has
been a series of research work towards enhancing its routing
performance by addressing various significant problems. This
manuscript mainly orients around the progress being made in
the line of secure routing protocol, which is still a bigger issue.
The paper discusses different approaches undertaken by existing
literature towards discrete security problem and explores the
effective level of security. The study outcome of the paper finds
that progress towards wireless ad hoc network is still very less
and there is a need to come up with robust security framework.
The paper also discusses the research gap being identified from
the existing techniques and finally discusses the future work
direction to address the certain unsolved problem.
Keywords—Attacks; confidentiality; secured routing; integrity;
mobile ad hoc network; wireless ad hoc network
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless ad hoc network consists of autonomous nodes that
are interconnected by themselves without any presence of
infrastructure [1]. It is highly useful for offering robustness
communication with minimal cost. The sustenance of wireless
ad hoc network is quite high irrespective of any adverse
deployment area [2]. For this reason, there is wide range of
applications using ad hoc network e.g. recovery from natural
disaster, combat, and military application, community network,
etc. However, there are multiple challenges in the design
principle of the wireless ad hoc network. It is essential that a
wireless network should overcome the issue about physical
medium, e.g., maximized bit rate, restricted range, noise, the
minimal range of transmission, etc. As the nodes perform its
mobility in the wireless ad hoc network, it is quite imperative
that communication status and routing behavior will also
change accordingly giving rise to dynamic topology. The
presence of shared uncontained medium in a wireless network
may also pose a significant security challenge while
performing routing in the ad hoc environment [3]. Apart from
this, energy has always been the peak problem associated with
routing protocols in the wireless ad hoc network. Although
there is various existing study to address such problem, the
problems are not completely been solved. It is because usage of
radio
interfaces, directional antenna, and wireless technology are
already shrouded with various security loopholes that are yet
under the desk of researchers. The prominent attacks on the
wireless ad hoc network are basically of two types, i.e.,
1) routing-disruption attacks, and 2) resource-consumption
attacks. The routing disruption-based attack is initiated by
forwarding counterfeited beacon to mislead the route
formation. Similarly, the resource-consumption based attack is
responsible for initiating an attack that leads to unwanted
drainage of energy or consumption of channel capacity.
Although, the wireless ad hoc network uses both public and
private key for performing encryption, usage of the public key
is found more than private keys. This is because the
implementation of the private key during distribution is quite
difficult to be achieved in the presence of dynamic topology.
There is another approach called Statistically Unique
Cryptographically Verifiable (SUCV) that allows the nodes to
select their addresses after generating public and private pairs
of keys. However, this approach is found ineffective to address
the problem of key set up [4]. Usage of Certificate Authority
(CA) is another frequently used approach to secure the
communication in the wireless ad hoc network. Therefore,
there are multiple numbers of challenges being associated with
the secure routing in the wireless ad hoc network. It is
significantly felt that there is no efficient modeling for
addressing secure routing issue. Study towards modeling will
allow the system to evaluate the type of attackers as well as
catch hold of the malicious node, which are very less being
prioritized in existing techniques. Existing routing technique
have proved potential improvement in security features but at
the cost of computational complexity. Therefore, this paper
discusses the three prominent forms of wireless ad hoc network
i.e., mesh network, mobile ad hoc network, and vehicular ad
hoc network. Although, wireless sensor network and delay
tolerant protocol is also a significant form of ad hoc network, it
has made some strong security implementation and is less
considered when it comes to ad hoc environment. So, this
manuscript doesn’t discuss any research progress towards
secure routing for wireless sensor network. Section II discusses
security challenges followed by a discussion of existing
techniques in Section III. Section IV discusses research gap
while Section V briefs about the conclusion and tentative
future direction of the research in secure routing in the wireless
ad hoc network.

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II. SECURITY CHALLENGES IN WIRELESS AD HOC
NETWORK
The inherent characteristics of the wireless ad hoc network,
itself, give rise to various forms of security challenges while
performing routing operation. Some of the essential security
challenges are as follows:
1) There is higher feasibility for a communication line to
become victim of link attacks that could be in either of the
form, i.e., messaging replay, impersonation, eavesdropping,
etc. All these illegitimate operation offers a form of an access
towards the confidential information. An intruder can directly
corrupt the message or tamper the message using active
attacks. All these adversarial operation leads to potential
damage of integrity, availability, non-repudiation, and
availability.
2) Normally, the nodes in wireless adhoc network don’t
have effective physical security that leads it to a very
vulnerable condition in hostile environment. Hence, it is
unwise to consider that origination of the intrusion could
possibly happen from outside only. In order to maintain highest
level of resiliency, ad hoc network are demanded to possess a
distributed architecture without any central actor.
3) The wireless ad hoc network is also characterized by the
dynamic topology that will mean that the nodes are
performing, joining and leaving the defined network very
frequently.
III. SECURE ROUTING IN WIRELESS AD HOC NETWORK
A secure routing protocol over the wireless ad hoc network
is not only meant for offering security features but also should
keep communication performance in mind (Fig. 1). It has been
seen that existing routing protocols can quite well cater up to
the need of dynamic topology of ad hoc network, but they are
highly incapable of resisting the malicious attacks.
Security Attacks
nature
passive Rational
Eavesdrop
ping Impersonation
Modification
DoS
Replay
Scope
External
Routing
Atttack
jamming
behaviour
Internal
malicious
Protocol
Layer
Active
Fig. 1. Security intrusion in wireless ad hoc network.
Rushing
Routing Table Overflow
Sybil
Wormhole
Sinkhole/Blackhole
Greyhole
Location Disclosure
Route Error Injection
Eaves Dropping
DoS
Data Plane
Control plane
Network Layer
Fig. 2. Taxonomies of attacks on network layer
A closer look into the security attack taxonomies will show
that there are essentially four types of intrusion in routing
operation of wireless ad hoc network, i.e., attacks based on
nature, attacks based on scope, behaviour-related attacks, and
attacks on protocol layers. The frequently heard attacks of
active and passive type come under nature-based attacks.
Routing attacks come under internal attack while jamming
attack comes under external attack. There are also behavioural-
based attacks. The protocol layer-based attacks are classified
depending on multiple layers, i.e., physical layer (jamming),
MAC layer (flooding, MAC spoofing, replay attack), network
layer (wormhole, control plane attack, sinkhole, blackhole,
denial of service, eavesdropping), TCP layer (flooding and de-
synchronization based attack). Attack associated with protocol
layer particularly is more affected on network layer where the
majority of the secure routing is implemented. Fig. 2 shows the
taxonomies of attacks over network layer.
Basically, to resist such attacks, a secure routing protocol in
the wireless ad hoc network is designed that are of two types:
i.e., (1) proactive and (2) reactive form. Secure Efficient
Distance Vector Routing (SEAD) [5] and Secured Link State
Protocol (SLSP) [6] are two prominent protocols in proactive
routing. SEAD is designed using destination sequence distance
vector and is essentially meant for resisting jamming attacks,
denial-of-service attacks, or any other forms of attacks that
result in valuable resource consumption. The routing message
is authenticated using the sequence number in SEAD. One of
the major limitations of SEAD protocol is its dependencies of
trusted entity that performs distribution of symmetric key in the
network. Such phenomenon may give rise to bottleneck issue
in the network. The next secured protocol SLSP is designed
using link state protocol approach that aims to discover an
effective topology followed by dissemination of packets of link
state. It uses one-way hash function and neighbor lookup
protocol for broadcasting state information. Unfortunately,
SLSP is incapable of resisting colluding attacks, e.g., blackhole
and wormhole attacks.

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TABLE. I. CHARACTERISTICS OF SECURED ROUTING PROTOCOL
Protocol
Feature
Can resist
Cannot resist
SEAD
-Trusted Third Party (TTP)
-Authentication using hop-by-hop
-Hash function
-Rushing attack
-Denial-of-Service
-Wormhole attack
-Blackhole attack
-Location disclosure
SLSP
-Threshold cryptography
-Neighbour Lookup Protocol
-Certification of Public keys by TTP
-Spoofing
-Denial-of-Service
-Wormhole attack
-Blackhole attack
-Location disclosure
SAR
-Usage of different keys
-Enhanced AODV implementation
-Rushing Attack
-Routing Attack
-Blackhole Attack
-Denial-of-Service
-Wormhole Attack
-Location disclosure
SRP
-Enhancement of Dynamic Source Routing
-MAC is used for authentication Route Request and Route
Reply
-Rushing Attack
-Poisoning Attack
-Routing Table Attack
-Denial-of-Service
-Wormhole Attack
-Location disclosure
SAODV
-Usage of Digital Signature
-One-way Hash Chain
-Enhancement of AODV
-Route Reply Attack
-Rushing Attack
-Replay Attack
-Poisoning Attack
-Routing Table Attack
-Denial-of-Service
-Wormhole Attack
-Blackhole Attack
-Location disclosure
ARIADNE
-Secret Shared Key
-Clock Synchronization
-Authentication (end-to-end)
-Dependency of key distribution center
-Selective Packet Dropping
-Rushing Attack
-Poisoning Attack
-Routing Table Attack
-Denial-of-Service
-Wormhole Attack
-Blackhole Attack
-Location disclosure
ARAN
-Uses TTP
-Apriori secure link information among the nodes
-Spoofing
-Rushing Attack
-Illegitimate node participation
-Route Request Attack
-Denial-of-Service
-Flooding Attack
-Wormhole Attack
-Blackhole Attack
SEAODV
-Enhancement of AODV
-Message Authentication (hop-by-hop)
-Bloom’s key
-Rushing Attack
-Flooding Attack
-Denial-of-Service
-Wormhole Attack
-Blackhole Attack
-Location disclosure
The reactive protocols make use of flooding of route
request message and further classified into 6 types: i.e., 1)
Security-aware Ad hoc Routing (SAR) [7], 2) Secure Routing
Protocol (SRP) [8], 3) Secure Ad hoc On-demand Distance
Vector (SAODV) [9], 4) A Secure On-demand Routing
Protocol for Ad hoc Network (ARIADNE) [10], 5)
Authenticated Routing for Ad hoc Network (ARAN) [11], and
6) Secured Enhanced AODV (SEAODV) [12]. The numbers of
secure routing techniques are more in reactive form as
compared to proactive form. Therefore, we briefly discuss its
characteristics in Table 1.
There are also other forms of taxonomies of intrusion when
it comes to secure routing protocol in the wireless ad hoc
network. We find that design of secure routing is done by
prevention and identification approach. Some good example
prevention-based routing approaches are i) ARAN (using
asymmetric cryptography), ii) SAR and SRP (using symmetric
cryptography), iii) SEAD and ARIADNE (using one-way hash
chain), iv) SLSP and SAODV (hybrid approach). Similarly,
secure routing protocols based on identification are as follows
e.g. i) Byzantine algorithm [13], ii) CORE algorithm [14], iii)
CONFIDANT algorithm [13], and iv) WatchDog and Pathrater
[15]. However, in the vehicular network, the trust factor is
extensively used. The secure routing techniques in vehicular
network consist of infrastructure based and self-organizing
based trust. The majority of the existing secure routing
protocols towards trust-based approaches mainly use precise
location of the source, cryptographic authentication using
public key infrastructure, repudiation of transmitter’s identity,
message transmission of other vehicular nodes, and validation
of infrastructure. The existing techniques towards securing
communication in the wireless ad hoc network mainly attempts
to offer security toward the broadcasted information that bears
sender’s information during route discovery process. The
routing techniques are also meant to provide identification of
the type of attacks especially about the spoofed or forfeited
information during ad hoc communication. A greedy-based
technique is one of the frequently used in the wireless ad hoc
network. However, apart from securing the communication
link, these reported existing protocols are consistently used in
research work by different forms. Still, the biggest hurdle is
that they are not completely capable of mitigating denial-of-
service, wormhole attack, blackhole attack, location disclosure
attack, etc. The next section highlights some recent work
carried out in the secure routing protocol.
IV. EXISTING TECHNIQUES OF SECURE ROUTING
Studies towards evolving up a secured routing mechanism
in the wireless ad hoc network have various variations of
techniques as well as approaches. The existing security
techniques are designed for addressing explicit problems about
security loopholes. We discuss only the significant research
techniques published during 2010 to till date. For effective
discussion, we brief the existing research contributions to
different categories of the wireless ad hoc network below.
A. Studies in Wireless Mesh Network
A Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a type of ad hoc
network where multiple nodes are connected to each other in a
mesh topology. It is characterized by multiple communication
paths to ensure zero link breakage as well as it also ensures
highest link quality by minimizing the spatial distance among
the nodes [16]. The best part is WMN can be combined with

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existing standards, e.g., IEEE 802.15/16/11, sensor network,
the internet, etc. to offer data communication service.
However, WMN suffers from significant security problems on
routing as it highly depends on adopting multicast routing
schemes. Such schemes are never safe for active intrusions.
Most recent, the work carried out by Matam and Tripathy [17]
have used digital signatures for developing a secure routing
mechanism to resist wormhole attack in WMN. The study
outcome was compared with some of the conventional routing
scheme to find better security performance. Another significant
problem associated with WMN is involvement of multiple
operators that results in zero cooperation finally leading to
malicious behavior of a node. This problem has been addressed
by Subhash and Ramachandram [18] who enhanced the feature
of Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) for
constructing a trust and reputation model. The technique
implements an algorithm to evaluate trust followed by
recommendation of trust and selection of secured trusted path.
The above-mentioned problems of multiple operator
involvements also lead to intrusion of privacy in WMN as the
attacks based on network layers are too high in it. This problem
was found to be addressed by Meganathan and Palanichamy
[19] who have used cross-layer approach with group signature
scheme to resist such attacks. The technique also uses dynamic
reputation for building subjective logic while performing route
discovery in WMN. Adoption of the cross layer has been seen
in the study of Bansal et al. [20] for developing a unique
intrusion detection system. Such problems of intrusion can be
counter-measured by including strong authentication protocol.
Li et al. [21] have presented a public key encryption for
enhancing the operability of Kerberos protocol by using
arbitrary numbers. Hybridizing is another mechanism found
out by certain researcher, e.g., Avule et al. [22] for
strengthening security in WMN. This technique appends fields
of message extension to the frame elements of selected route.
The study outcome shows good communication performance
for the smaller network. For the larger network, WMN uses
hop-by-hop communication that is highly prone to cyber-
attack. This problem was addressed by Gharavi and Hu [23] by
using a dynamic update strategy towards the distribution of the
secure key. The technique utilizes hash-based encryption to
cipher the secure messages against Denial-of-Service attacks in
WMN. There is already a default routing protocol in WMN
that are found to be protected by various existing research-
based secured routing technique. Tan et al. [24] have evaluated
the strength of existing security approaches. The study
outcome speaks of non-availability of robust security feature
while routing in WMN.
B. Studies in Mobile Ad hoc Network
Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is another type of
wireless ad hoc network where each mobile node are also
considered to be the router. It has highly decentralized
architecture and characterized by dynamic topology. These
inherent characteristics are itself possessed as a great security
threat to its routing protocols. Although there are various
existing studies towards secured routing in MANET [25], there
is no single standard protocol being found 100% resilient
against complex intrusion. In this regards, AODV is being used
various researchers for incorporating security in MANET.
Alkhamisi and Buhari [26] have enhanced the AODV by
introducing multipath-based and trust-based communication in
it. The technique is responsible for monitoring the
communication behavior of a mobile node followed by
computation of trust factor for identification of intrusion.
Discussion of trust-model was also seen in the studies of Rikli
and Alnasser [27] who have developed a centralized
architecture to compute trust. Another bigger problem within
MANET secure routing is the adoption of multicast
communication strategy that drains high energy and overshoots
delay and overheads. This problem was addressed by
Madhusudhanan et al. [28] by introducing key management
exclusively for multicast routing. This technique utilizes
encryption techniques with the session key for forwarding the
data using multicast routing over fixed interval for rekeying.
Security problems about multicast routing in MANET have
been addressed by Vijendran and Gripsy [29]. This technique
assists in on-demand discovery. Multicast routing also leads
the location information quite vulnerable in MANET. Research
in this direction has been carried out by Saravanan and
Sakthivel [30] who have used a digital signature with a time
stamp for carrying out authentication. A private key crypto-
system has been introduced with a symmetric key for ensuring
sufficient privacy of location information in MANET. There
are also schemes that perform repeated encryption process to
resists attacks. One such scheme is found in the work of Wu et
al. [31] where symmetric encryption is used without any need
to change source node protocol. Sekaran and Parasuraman
[32] have used Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
algorithm to secure communication while disseminating
location information within it. The technique is resistive
against any attack that causes depletion of the energy of the
mobile node at any cause. Study towards addressing anonymity
problems in communication for ad hoc network has been
carried out by Yuan [33]. The technique renders all the
communication nodes along with the intermediate node
anonymous using the public key. The technique is found to be
completely independent of any additional key establishments.
Sagheer and Taher [34] have used identity-based encryption
over AODV to offer secured routing. A similar form of study
was also carried out by Wan et al. [35] where author have
addressed the privacy problems as well as unlink ability issue
in communication over MANET. The technique mainly uses
identity-based encryption and group signature to retain
potential privacy.
C. Studies in Vehicular Ad hoc Network
Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is another form of
wireless ad hoc network that is characterized by infrastructure
less and applies multihop network for providing
communication. The study of VANET considers two forms of
actors i.e. Road Side Unit (RSU) and On-Board Unit (OBU). A
vehicle node is normally termed as OBU which has
communicated with another OBU using RSU [36]. Hence, as
faster security operations are required in VANET system that
can normally be offered by Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
Unfortunately, these mechanism suffers from serious pitfalls,
and hence it is not much applicable in VANET system
(however, it is much better in another form of the wireless
system e.g. wireless sensor network). Study on this direction
was carried out by Tan et al. [37] by introducing a unique key
management approach. The technique uses asymmetric

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encryption mechanism for controlling the computational cost.
The technique allows concatenating identity and its respective
public key for OBU as well as RSU that results in the
elimination of revocation list of certificates. Another key
management strategy has been introduced by Vijayakumar et
al. [38] that center around trusted authority to perform
communication. The technique introduces a dual authentication
approach for resisting illegitimate vehicular node from entering
VANET system. Similarly, key management is also carried out
using dual manner for effective dissemination of group key.
The study contributes to cost-effective mechanism to add or
revoke user in VANET. Study towards strengthening
authentication mechanism is also discussed by Wang et al. [39]
along with privacy problems. The technique uses biological
password as well as decentralized digital certificate to perform
authentication. In cryptography, ensuring fault tolerance is one
of the challenging tasks especially in VANET system.
Research towards implementing fault tolerant communication
system has been carried out by Li et al. [40]. The author uses
the Light Encryption Device (LED) principle that was
originally implemented by Guo et al. [41]. The technique is
claimed to support 64-128 bit encryption key that is similar to
AES performance. Ultimately, the study finds the vulnerability
factor of LED in VANET system. However, one of the biggest
impediments towards VANET security is to even identify the
extent of malicious information in dissemination process. A
research attempt of Li and Song [42] has introduced a
methodology using trust factor for identification of the
malicious node as well as malicious data. Lo, and Tsai [43]
have used Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) as well as an
identity-based signature mechanism to secure the
communication system in VANET. The scheme mainly
focuses on efficient authentication process between RSU and
Vehicular nodes. Study towards group key dissemination
scheme is presented by Park and Seo [44]. The technique
constructs protocols for securing a vehicle to vehicle
communication along with the assurance of system integrity.
Tan et al. [45] have introduced filtering algorithm based on the
fuzzy logic-based approach to computing the trust factor of a
node in VANET. An interesting technique has been presented
by Tripathi et al. [46] towards privacy problems in VANET
system by incorporating private key encryption. Uniquely, the
technique uses multilingual translation mechanism for
encoding the messages. Yang et al. [47] have used reputation-
based approach along with Dempster-Shafer evidence theory
for identifying the selfish node. The technique is also found to
address the energy problems too along with security features.
Abumansoor and Boukerche [48] have addressed the security
problem arising from the location of non-line of sight in
VANET. The summary of the existing techniques to secure the
wireless ad hoc network is sown below in Table 2.
TABLE. II. SUMMARY OF EXISTING TECHNIQUES TO SECURE WIRELESS AD HOC NETWORK
Authors
Problems
Techniques
Contribution
Limitation
Wireless Mesh Network
Matam [17]
Wormhole attack
Digital signature
Resistive against routing loop
attack, Route corruption attack,
metric manipulation attack.
It doesn’t offer faster response
time for large network
Subhash [18]
Node misbehaviour
Trust and reputation
Accurate trust recommendation
Trust model offer significant
overhead
Meganathan [19]
Network layer attacks
Cross layer, ID based
encryption, group
signature
Ensure privacy, security, reliability
Lower response rate,
computational complex
Bansal et al. [20]
Detection of malicious
behaviour
Cross layer,
Resistive towards low intensity
attack and can identify switching
behaviour
Outcomes are not benchmarked
Li et al. [21]
Authentication
Enhancing Kerberos
protocol using public
key cryptography
Public keys are kept separated from
higher calculation of cost
No benchmarking of outcomes,
less consideration of mobility.
Avule et al. [22]
Security attacks
Adding fields to frames
of selected path
Protect both mutable and non-
mutable fields, good
communication performance
Not applicable to large scale
networks
Gharavi [23]
Cyber-attack, denial-of-
service
Hash based encryption
Simplified encryption technique
Only subjective to denial of
service attack
Tan et al. [24]
Comparative study of
existing secure routing
Comparative analysis
Existing techniques are not robust
-
Mobile Ad hoc
Network (MANET)
Alkhamisi [26]
Attack identification &
isolation
Enhancing AODV,
adding trust
Enhances throughput
Less effective benchmarking,
behaviour to large & sparse
network is not found
Rikli [27]
Attack identification
Trust-based modeling
Claimed to detect all types of
attackers
Recursive functions will lead to
complexity and overhead
It is subjective approach to sensor
network only.

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Madhusudhanan et
al. [28]
Security in multicast
routing
Key management, fixed
interval for rekeying,
session key
Minimizes overhead of rekeying
Rekeying generates memory
overflow in dense network
Vijendran [29].
Security in multicast
routing
Dynamic mobile point
relay, location
Claimed to be energy efficient
Delay and overhead could
possibly shoot up in real-time file
transmission as well as in large
network.
Saravanan [30]
Privacy of location in
multicasting, identity-
spoofing attack
Symmetric key, digital
signature
Ensure location anonymity
Not applicable for variable bit rate
traffic, less evidence to prove key
strength
Wu et al. [31]
Routing attack
Double encryption
Have low complexity
Not applicable to variable bit rate
traffic, not tested over large scale
network.
Sekaran [32]
Security and seamless
communication
AES protocol
Good communication performance
Outcome is not benchmarked,
algorithm complexity over not is
not testified
Yuan [33]
Packet analysis attack,
anonymity problems of
nodes, active attacks,
denial-of-service
Public key encryption
Zero dependency of extra key
establishment
Uses RSA
Taher [34]
Security for nodes
Identity-based
encryption
Simple technique
Not applicable for larger network
with increased node mobility
Wan et al. [35]
Anonymity
Identity-based
encryption, group
signature
Better packet delivery performance
Not applicable for larger network
with increased node mobility
Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET)
Tan et al. [37]
PKI problems
Asymmetric encryption
Control computational cost,
reduced time for key generation
High storage cost
Vijayakumar et al.
[38]
Authentication, key
management
Fuzzy logic, dual
approach for group
keying and
authentication
Computationally cost effective
Doesn’t address node location
privacy, constructed fuzzy rule-set
cannot cover up entire dynamic
scene of communication.
Wang et al. [39]
Authentication, privacy
Biological password,
decentralized certificate
authority
Significant control over
computational cost, minimizes
overheads
Resilient to only denial-of-service
Li et al. [40]
Assessing fault for LED
Mathematical analysis
Study finds LED to be vulnerable
Study focused on side-channel
attack
Li [42]
Identification of data
trust
Trust management
scheme
Better precision performance
Chances of increased overhead on
large network
Lo [43]
Privacy in VANET
Identity-based signature,
ECC
Reduced time consumption
Iterative process will lead to space
complexity
Park [44]
Securing group
communication
Constructed protocol to
protect group key
Faster response time, scalable
performance
Outcomes not benchmarked
Tan et al. [45]
Attacks in data plane of
VANET
Fuzzy logic
Detects and resist well for attacks
in data plane
Constructed fuzzy rule-set cannot
cover up entire dynamic scene of
communication.
Tripathi et al. [46]
Privacy in VANET
Multilingual
translational
Very simple technique to
implement
Not resistive against node capture
attack or key compromise attack.
Yang et al. [47]
Selfish node in VANET
Dempster Shafer,
Reputation
Faster response time for decision
making
Space complexity not addressed
Abumansoor [48]
Security over non-line of
sight
Collaborative protocol
Maintains integrity in localization
services
Protocol doesn’t work if there is
no shared neighbor node.

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V. RESEARCH GAP
From the previous section, it has been seen that there are
various attempts being made towards addressing secure routing
problems in the wireless ad hoc network. Table 1 has discussed
the contribution along with limitations of each approaches
being studied. There is no doubt that all the above-mentioned
techniques have some significant contribution that assists the
future researchers potentially; however, it cannot be ignored
that each technique of existing literature is also associated with
certain limitation. In this section, we will point out certain
research gap, which we felt that it could have been addressed in
the past but was not found so because of unknown reason. The
significant research gaps are as follows:
A. Unbalanced Focus in Research Technique
It could be notably understood that there are discrete forms
of secure routing techniques and trust/reputation-based
approach is common to find in the wireless ad hoc network.
The majority of the research using trust has used it only for
choosing the secured route that is found matching with certain
trust conditions. Unfortunately, such schemes are not found to
balance the anticipated communication need (e.g., throughput)
of a node in the generic environment of the wireless ad hoc
network. Similarly, we also find that the methodologies of
designing intrusion detection system are quite specific to a type
of wireless ad hoc network that will mean its dependencies
over the specific form of network. It will also mean that such
scheme may be very particular to one type of wireless ad hoc
network and cannot be exchanged with each other. This will
pose a practical implementation of the wireless ad hoc network
in real-time while working on the collaborative network.
Another observation is that all the trust-based approaches have
been remodeled and novelty is still missing. Hence, there is a
need that such techniques should be seriously designed by re-
defining the generic environment of the wireless ad hoc
network.
B. Frequent Usage of AODV
The majority of the studies towards secure routing over the
wireless ad hoc network is constructed on the top of frequently
used AODV as routing protocol. Well, the problem is AODV
suffers from the problem of stale data while routing and it can
significantly generate control overhead. Existing study doesn’t
enhance AODV but just add security on the top of it that
eventually means that still the legacy communication problems
in a new protocol are allowed to be continued unnoticed. It was
also known that usage of AODV or applying any form of
remodeling it with sophisticate cryptography (e.g., hashing,
ECC, symmetric encryption, etc.) will only lead to bandwidth
consumption that has never been found to be testified while
evaluating security strength in the existing system. There is far
better and efficient routing protocol in wireless ad hoc network,
e.g., Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) which could also
be used in secure routing. However, the trend is more on
AODV while implying security features.
C. Missing Feature in Attack Identification and Isolation
Techniques
Maximum category of the existing literature is focused on
using the principle of attack identification and isolation.
However, we find that such schemes are all focused on
particular types of attack and that will mean that they are not
capable of resisting another form of attack. The second
problem in all these approaches is that they consider single
intruders while routing and so existing system fails to address
the security breach problem that may occur in the presence of
dual colluding intruders. The third potential problem in this
regard is that all the cryptographic based approach are shown
to have a successful outcome when it comes to identification of
attacks. However, there are no significant studies where the
malicious nodes have been identified effectively. Certain
studies which introduces selfish node may turn out to be
regular node after accomplishing its objective, and hence
existing techniques fails to discretize the form of attack while
constructing the secure routing principle.
D. Less Focus on Computational Complexity
Existing techniques using digital signatures can potentially
lead to communication overhead and possibly invite other
forms of attack, which they are not meant to resist. The process
of signing the message involves computational cost that may
increase exponentially with increase in network sizes. There is
also a possibility of lack of spontaneous network as such
technique will require nodes to have apriori information about
each other for facilitating sharing of public keys.
E. No Significant Initiative towards Optimization
We find that cost-effective optimization process is not
being incorporated in the existing research techniques towards
securing routing in the wireless ad hoc network. Without
optimization technique, it is quite impossible for cost
effectively plan the equilibrium between security computation
and communication performance under any adverse scenario of
intrusion. Hence, there is an emergent need for such research
direction.
VI. CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK
According to the theory, the wireless ad hoc network is one
of the best alternative ways to establish connectivity in the
region which doesn’t have any form of infrastructure.
However, establishing communication among the nodes is not
that easy task in the ad hoc network as these nodes are
consistently moving and forming a dynamic topology. The
conventional study says that in MANET and rural VANET
system, the node could move in any arbitrary direction;
however, in the case of urban VANET system the path is very
well defined. All this will mean that the applicability of the
routing protocols in wireless ad hoc network differs in different
forms of the network. This pattern is also same for secure
routing protocols. First of all, there is extremely less progress
made towards evolving up with secure routing techniques in
the wireless ad hoc network, and the only handful of names of
routing protocol exists in present time. This document has
reviewed some of the recently implemented routing protocols
to mitigate attacks in the wireless mesh network, mobile ad hoc
network, and vehicular ad hoc network. We also find that there
is significant research gap explored from existing literature,
e.g., unbalanced focus in research technique, frequent usage of
AODV, missing a feature in attack identification and isolation
techniques, less focus on computational complexity, no

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significant initiative towards optimization. So, our future work
direction will be towards addressing such explored problems.
Our first initiative toward future research work will be to
develop a secure routing protocol to address some lethal
attacks. This review finding suggests that certain lethal attacks,
e.g., wormhole attack, black hole attack, location disclosure,
and denial-of-service are rarely addressed by existing secured
routing techniques. Our future idea will be to evolve up with an
analytical modeling that formulates a virtual decoy node to
capture the attacker as well as isolate the attacker. A novel
adversarial model will be designed based on the features of
above-mentioned attacks. Our second research initiative will
also be to explore the feasibility of coming up with cost
effective optimization model as it is quite a few to find in
existing literature.
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AUTHOR’S PROFILE
Jyoti Neeli, is currently a research scholar in RV College
of Engineering, Bengaluru working as an Associate Professor
in Department of Information Science & Engineering Global
Academy of Technology, Bengaluru. She has completed her
M. Tech in Computer Science & Engineering from VTU. She
has 15 years of experience in teaching and 6 years in R&D. Her area of interest
includes Computer networks, Software testing, Mathematical models.
Dr. N K Cauvery, is Professor and Head of
Department of Information Science & Engineering, RV
College of Engineering, Bengaluru. She has completed
her Ph. D from VTU with research title as “Routing in
Computer Network using Genetic Algorithm”. She has
17 years of experience in teaching and 7 years in R&D.
She has published papers both in national & international conferences. Her area
of interest includes Computer network, Compiler Design, Genetic Algorithm.