How do the security issues vary from MANETs versus sensor networks versus WiMax versus WMNs? Explain clearly.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The basic issue is what kind of resources available to different wireless technologies. Typically, in both WiMAX and WMN, the BS or the routers are connected to A/C power and availability of energy is not an issue. However, both a MANET and a sensor network have their wireless devices running on batteries and have limited energy. Therefore, attempts are made to conserve energy for wireless devices used for MANETs and sensor networks. This also affects the security scheme used in these networks. Besides, there is a central station controlling access in WiMAX (BS) and WMN (IGW); while there is no central authority in a MANET or a WSN. It may be noted that the BS or sink node in a WSN can have same control on sensing and radio transmission schedule by broadcasting control packets periodically to all the sensors by the BS. But, so far as operation is concerned, each sensor is pretty much independent and works more or less like a distributed system. In addition, locations of devices in a MANET and sensor networks, can be determined after deployment and locations of wireless devices cannot be pre-planned. In other word, it is rather impossible to say which wireless devices will be each other’s neighbors. This makes security issue much more complex in MANETs and Sensor net- works. As the .rst thing each wireless device has to do is to authenticate its neighbors and is a very time and resource consuming process. Then other things like authorization, encryption, and protection against different types of attacks ought to be considered. It may also be noted that the data sent by sensors may not be that critical if that is compromised. So, security of basic data may not be that important, unless it represents some aggregated value or an appropriate consolidation of information. So far as the MANET is concerned, it may depend on the situation and the application being processed. In general, the information may be of general use, unless used for some specific defense application. Therefore, the rule of thumb is the WiMAX and WMNs do follow a central control and it is rather easier to incorporated any degree of security desirable; while it is rather di¢ cult to implement simple security mechanisms in MANETs and sensor networks.