A Survey of Intrusion Detection Systems for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Tactical Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are widely deployed in military organizations that have critical needs of communication even with the absence of fixed infrastructure. The lack of communication infrastructure and dynamic topology makes MANETs vulnerable to a wide range attacks. Tactical military operations are among the prime users of ad-hoc networks. The military holds higher standards of security requirements and thus require special intrusion detection applications. Conventional Intrusion Detection System (IDS) require central control and monitoring entities and thus cannot be applied to MANETs. Solutions to secure these networks are based on distributed and cooperative security. This paper presents a survey of IDS specifically for MANETs and also highlights the strengths and weakness of each model. We present a unique evaluation matrix for measuring the effectiveness of IDS for MANETs in an emergency response scenario.