Performance evaluation of a new secure routing protocol for UAV Ad hoc Network

UAANET (UAV Ad hoc Network) is defined as an autonomous system made of swarm of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) and GCS (Ground Control Station). Compared to other types of MANET (Mobile Ad hoc network), UAANET have some unique features and bring several challenges. One of them is the design of routing protocol. It must be efficient for creating routes between nodes and dynamically adjusting to the rapidly changing topology. It must also be secure to protect the integrity of the network against malicious attackers. In this paper, we will present the architecture and the performance evaluation (based on both real-life experimental and emulation studies) of a secure routing protocol called SUAP (Secure UAV Ad hoc routing Protocol). SUAP ensures routing services between nodes to exchange real-time traffic and also guarantees message authentication and integrity to protect the network integrity. Additional security mechanisms were added to detect Wormhole attacks. Wormhole attacks represent a high level of risk for UAV ad hoc network and this is the reason why we choose to focus on this specific multi node attack. Through performance evaluation campaign, our results show that SUAP ensures the expected security services against different types of attacks while providing an acceptable quality of service for real-time data exchanges.