Secure data forwarding in wireless ad hoc networks

Network routing in wireless ad hoc networks is liable to attacks that may have a grave impact on network operations. Such attacks can be targeted at the route discovery process or the data packet forwarding process. Although the protection of route discovery is a critical prerequisite to ensure the robustness of the routing process, secured route discovery by no means eliminates attacks on routing. We, accordingly, propose a secure data forwarding protocol that detects faulty links in the packet forwarding process, which enables the corresponding sources to progressively route packets over non-faulty paths.