A novel solution for protecting privacy in ad hoc network

Communicating nodes in a wireless and mobile ad hoc network usually seek the help of other intermediate nodes to get communicate channels. In such an open environment, malicious intermediate nodes can be a threat to the security and/or anonymity of the exchanged data between the mobile nodes. The main purposes of this work are to define more strict requirements on the anonymity and security properties of the routing protocol in ad hoc network, and propose a solution of achieving the goal. Our solution includes a mechanism to establish a trusted relation between all neighboring nodes and a secure routing protocol of protecting privacy. The routing protocol based on the mechanism can avoid untrustworthy nodes during his route discovery process and resist the attack of DoS. We present our scheme, and report on its performance using an extensive set of simulation set of experiments using GloMoSim simulator. Our results indicate clearly that protecting privacy can be achieved in mobile ad hoc network.