VLX: A novel virtual localization extension for geographical leash-based secure routing in indoor Wireless Mesh scenarios

Emergency and rescue organizations are giving Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) increased attention as the key technology to realize network connectivity anywhere, anytime with simplicity and low cost. The WMNs capability for self-organization significantly reduces the complexity of network deployment and maintenance, and thus requires minimal upfront investment. On the other hand, this characteristic makes WMNs prone to a new type of attacks, namely wormhole. While geographical leash-based secure routing such as PASER provides protection against wormhole in outdoor scenarios, in indoor scenarios, this method is ineffective since the geographical position of nodes is not always known (no GPS). For this end, we propose in this paper an efficient security extension (VLX) to secure WMNs routing against wormhole in indoor scenarios using a novel virtual localization technology. We extend the secure routing protocol PASER with our novel approach and evaluate it in different scenarios. The results show that VLX has negligible to no side effect in outdoor scenarios. It provides nearly the same level of security indoors as geographical leashes outdoors. It grants legitimate indoor nodes access to the network despite the lack of their geographical information. It has a light overhead and it is not sensitive to low outdoor to indoor node ratios.