An Efficient and User Privacy-Preserving Routing Protocol for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a key technology for next generation wireless broadband networks showing rapid progress and inspiring numerous compelling applications. A WMN comprises of a set of mesh routers (MRs) and mesh clients (MCs), where MRs are connected to the Internet backbone through the Internet gateways (IGWs). The MCs are wireless devices and communicate among themselves over possibly multi-hop paths with or without the involvement of MRs. User privacy and security have been primary concerns in WMNs due to their peer-to-peer network topology, shared wireless medium, stringent resource constraints, and highly dynamic environment. Moreover, to support real-time applications, WMNs must also be equipped with robust, reliable and efficient routing protocols so as to minimize the end-to-end latency. Design of a secure and efficient routing protocol for WMNs, therefore, is of paramount importance. In this paper, we propose an efficient and reliable routing protocol that also provides user anonymity in WMNs. The protocol is based on an accurate estimation of the available bandwidth in the wireless links and a robust estimation of the end-to-end delay in a routing path, and minimization of control message overhead. The user anonymity, authentication and data privacy is achieved by application of a novel protocol that is based on Rivest's ring signature scheme. Simulations carried out on the proposed protocol demonstrate that it is more efficient than some of the existing routing protocols. 1. Introduction. Wireless mesh networking has emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation wireless networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to service providers. WMNs are multi-hop wireless networks formed by mesh routers (which form a wireless mesh backbone) and mesh clients. The mesh routers provide a rich radio mesh connectivity which significantly reduces the up-front deployment cost of the network. Mesh routers are typically stationary and do not have power constraints. However, the clients are mobile and energy-constrained. Some mesh routers are designated as gateway routers which are connected to the Internet through a wired backbone. A gateway router provides access to conventional clients and interconnects ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other networks to the Internet. A mesh network can provide multi-hop communication paths between wireless clients, thereby serving as a community network, or can provide multi-hop paths between the client and the gateway router, thereby providing broadband Internet access to the clients. As WMNs become an increasingly …