A secure geographical routing protocol for highly-dynamic aeronautical networks

Geographical routing protocols in highly-dynamic aeronautical ad-hoc networks are vulnerable to fake geo-location information as an attack that affects network performance. In this paper, a secure geographical routing protocol, called SAeroRP, for multi-hop routing in a highly dynamic aeronautical ad-hoc network is presented. SAeroRP uses the ground station as a trusted third party for authentication and key transport. SAeroRP requires that air-borne nodes be equipped with a second transceiver with a long range (150 Km) and wide downlink bandwidth for point-to-point communication with the ground station. Each packet used in the protocol is authenticated and encrypted to prevent fake geo-location information. NS3 simulation analysis shows that the packet delivery ratio for the aeronautical routing protocol AeroRP decreased to up to 50%, depending on attack type and number of attackers. On the contrary, the attack has minimal effect on SAeroRP and the packet delivery ratio is almost the same as that without attack.