SECURITY CHALLENGES IN WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS – LITERATURE REVIEW

WMN can be defined as a dynamic, self-organized, self-configured, decentralized wireless multi-hop-network, consisting of MRs and MCs (Zeng & Lou, 2008; Kone & Das, 2008; Shubat & Eissed, 2013). The purpose of this review is to investigate WMN security issues and challenges based on: confidentiality, integrity, reliability and authentication. Shubat et al, (2013) explain that two types of nodes MR and CR have specific functions essential to the operation of the WMN. This in turn requires wide usage of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, hence the significance or routing protocols (Shubat et al, 2013). WMN relies heavily on boundary-less and unprotected RF to traverse data to network members. WMN is being characterized by its cheap easy and fast deploy capabilities for last-mile solution for ubiquitous internet access (Zhu, Fang, & Wang, 2010; Yi, Wu, Zou & Liu, 2010). Traditional wired and wireless systems such as IEEE 802.11 Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) which is the same as Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), IEEE 802.15 Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN), IEEE 802.16 World Wide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) , and IEEE. 802.3 Ethernet / Local Area Network (LAN) (Lewis, 2008), although differ from WMNs, they are still part of its architecture e.g. they are required to formulate the backbone connections between internetworks and multi clients, hence the multi-cast multi-hop mesh. The remainder of this review is organized as follow: session one defines and describes the WMNs while session two provides a summary of the IEEE 802.11 standards and RF applications. Session three investigates the WMN architecture and router protocols. Security issues and challenges in WMN are being discussed in session four follow by the conclusion and references.