Security/QoS-aware route selection in multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks

Recently extensive works have been devoted to the performance analysis of physical layer security in wireless communication systems. However, the combination of physical layer security and quality of service (QoS) for route selection in multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks (WANETs) still remains an open technical challenge. As an initial step towards this end, this paper focuses on a multi-hop WANET with two typical transmission schemes amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF), and explores the route selection with the consideration of both security and QoS. We first derive the closed-form expressions of secrecy outage probability (SOP) and connection outage probability (COP) for a single hop link, and further extend the results to an end-to-end route. Then we conduct the performance comparison between the AF scheme and DF scheme. Finally, based on both the SOP and COP of a route, we formulate the route metric and propose a flexible route selection algorithm which enables us to select the suitable route for message delivery according to different security and QoS requirements.