A security architecture for attacks detection and authentication in wireless mesh networks

A wireless mesh network (WMN) consists of numerous mesh nodes. It provides effective wireless internet connectivity due to efficient network architecture where mobile end users are connected wirelessly, and higher levels are wired to avoid energy constraints, node failure, and other related issues. WMN functions efficiently in providing seamless internet access but is highly susceptible to security issues such as attack and validation failure. In Literature, there are very few works which address the attacks on both the mesh client and AP while providing authentication. This paper extends the existing work and develops a security architecture for authentication and attack detection in (SAAAD) WMN. It provides authentication through trusted routers and detect the cloned AP attack and internal attacks. Cloned AP attacks are detected by the gateways through checking the information of new joining AP against the AP database. Internal attacks are detected by the gateways using the opinions collected from mesh routers and directly observed trust values. Simulation results show that SAAAD provides better detection accuracy by reducing the computational and communication overheads.