Authentication, authorization, and accounting of services in multi-hop mobile networks through rewarding

This paper treats the problem of authentication through the multi-hop communication, authorization to services access, and efficient collaboration between ad hoc nodes in order to assure efficient packet relaying during services access, thus alleviating major problems in ad hoc networks deployment. A novel solution is proposed allowing for authentication and authorization of services, while coupling the accounting process for each user (ad hoc node) with his level of collaboration in terms of participation in packets relaying for other nodes. The billing of services takes a novel notion, where it concerns not only `debit´, which classically happens, but also `credit´ as a reward for collaborative users. The authentication and authorization for services access mechanism has been implemented and integrated in an ad hoc mesh platform, where multimedia applications have been tested, and performance evaluation has been done.