Energy Aware Secure Routing for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, we present a clustering-based energy aware secure routing protocol that computes trustworthy and energy efficient secure routes for wireless ad hoc networks (WANETs). Clustering in ad hoc networking paradigm is very useful for achieving scalability and robustness as it helps to save the bandwidth, to take simpler routing decisions, thus results in decreased energy dissipation of the network. WANETs are often deployed in such places where recharge or replace of energy sources is difficult. Further, unpredicted mobility and quasi-static nature of nodes and dynamic network topology yield a serious need for battery awareness during routing. In light of this, we first provide a definition of network lifetime based on application-specific criteria. Also a mathematical model for calculating residual battery power has been framed to propose an energy aware routing protocol. Trust-based scheme is used to assure secure end-to-end delivery of packets in the network. Extensive simulation has been carried out to show the efficacy of the proposed protocol to prolong the network lifetime.