An anonymous secure routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

Due to the broadcast nature of wireless transmissions, communications in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are more subject to malicious traffic analysis. In spite of the secure routing protocols, traffic analysis attacks are still not well addressed. Indeed, these protocols focus on security of route maintaining and defending against modification of routing information, which cannot prevent traffic analysis attack. Anonymity is one of the most important methods to resistant against the malicious traffic analysis. In this paper, we propose an anonymous version of ARAN, which is one of the most secure routing protocols, to provide anonymity and preserve security of nodes in MANETs. The proposed protocol bases on the combination of the anonymous communication along with security specifications of ARAN. The main contribution of our protocol is integrating a variety of anonymous functionalities such as identity privacy, location privacy and route anonymity together with security features of ARAN.