Real-Time Anonymous Routing for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

We propose the anonymous symmetrically cryptographic (ASC) routing protocol which is entirely based on a symmetric cryptosystem. The ASC protocol preserves the identity privacy, location privacy and route anonymity with only a negligible overhead in terms of processing requirements and packet size. Furthermore, the ASC protocol does not rely on any trusted agent or centralized mechanism (both of which are impractical in hostile environments). Compared with other anonymous routing protocols, the ASC protocol reduces the end-to-end delay by orders of magnitude, while performing comparably well in terms of packet delivery ratio. These features enable anonymity for applications with strict QoS requirements (e.g. video and audio streaming) over mobile ad hoc networks.