Ad-Hoc Networks Quality of Service and Security overview

An ad-hoc network, also called an ad-hoc wireless network, is an infrastructure-free wireless network that continually self-configures.

This article briefly lists the ad-hoc networks’ quality of service parameters and the security techniques.

ad-hoc network (Image Reference: Drone Below)

Quality of Service parameters

Mainly, there are eight quality of service parameters for the ad-hoc networks:

1. Bandwidth: the rate at which an application’s traffic must be carried by the network.
2. Latency: the delay that an application can tolerate in delivering a packet of data.
3. Jitter: variation in Latency.
4. Loss: the percentage of lost data.
5. Security
6. Availability: the ability of a device to send or receive packet from other devices.
7. Battery life
8. Mobility

Security techniques used in ad hoc networks

There are three popular techniques for securing ad-hoc networks:

1. Public Key algorithm: Every device generates a pair of keys an use them for encryption and decryption.
2. Authentication using certificates: each device must have a certificate from a trusted root.
3. Hash functions: to check signature and data integrity.

These security methods increases the network traffic between devices, and require more processing in each devices, also communication between devices will consume more time.

References

1. Wang Feng and Shang Qing-wei and CaoKe, A Mobile Ad Hoc Network Public Key Encryption Algorithm Based on Hash-Chain, Procedia Engineering. Volume 23, 2011, Pages 659–664 , 19 Dec 2011
2. Dilli Ravilla and Chandra Shekar Reddy Putta, Enhancing the Security of MANETs using Hash Algorithms, Procedia Computer Science. Volume 54, 2015, Pages 196–206, 21 Aug 2015
3. Microsoft Developer Network, What is Network Qos?, Published: 03 Sep 1999, URL: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742481.aspx#XSLTsection124121120120, Accessed: 23 Oct 2017
4. Lidong Zhou And Zygmunt J. Haas, Securing Ad Hoc Networks , Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853, 01 Nov 1999
5. Mobile ad hoc networks, URL: www.ece.rochester.edu/courses/ECE586/lectures/MANETS_QoS.pdf, Accessed: 23 Oct 2017