ANALYSIS OF SECURE CONNECTIVITY AND HOP COUNT OF AD-HOC NETWORKS WITH COLLUDING EAVESDROPPERS

Abstract

Connectivity and hop count are two important properties of multi-hop wireless ad-hoc networks (AHWN). When considering security, establishing a secure multi-hop path is challenging because an intermediate node that is connected to the previous nodes may not be safe enough to receive data from those nodes and vice versa. To analyze this property, we use stochastic geometry graphs to model the AHWN with multiple eavesdroppers in the worst-case scenario where the eavesdroppers collude with each other. Next, we propose a simulation-based analysis method to obtain the path connectivity, hop count distribution, and average hop count under various evaluation scenarios. The simulation results show that the connectivity reaches a saturated value of 0.93 when the legitimate node density is 1,8810-3 node/m2. In addition, the shape parameter of the Nakagami fading channel only reduces the connectivity by 5.62% compared to 29.96% of the eavesdropper density. The results of this paper provide valuable information on the design and evaluation of security-aware multi-hop AHWNs.