Anonymous Private Routing and Secure Transmission Protocol in Ad Hoc Networks (APRSTPN)

There are large numbers of papers on routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) that use anonymous routing protocols which hide node identities and/or routes from outside observers in order to provide anonymity protection. However, the present anonymous routing protocols either have hop-by-hop encryption or redundant traffic either generates high cost or cannot provide full anonymity protection to source nodes, destination nodes, and routes. The high cost exacerbates the inherent resource constraint problem in MANETs especially in multimedia wireless applications. To provide high anonymity protection with low cost, we propose Anonymous Private Routing and Secure Transmission Protocol in Ad Hoc Networks (APRSTPN). APRSTPN dynamically partitions the network field into zones and randomly chooses nodes in zones as intermediary relay nodes, forming a non traceable anonymous route. It also hides the data initiator/receiver among many initiators/receivers to strengthen source and destination anonymity protection. Thus, APRSTPN offers anonymity protection to sources, destinations, and routes. It also avoids the dead-end problem using geographic routing without compromising anonymity protection. APRSTPN achieves better route anonymity protection and lower cost compared to other anonymous routing protocols.