Anonymous Networking amidst Eavesdroppers

—The problem of security against packet timing based traffic analysis in wireless networks is considered in this work. An analytical measure of “anonymity” of routes in eavesdropped networks is proposed using the information-theoretic equivocation. For a physical layer with orthogonal transmitter directed signaling, scheduling and relaying techniques are designed to maximize achievable network performance for any desired level of anonymity. The network performance is measured by the total rate of packets delivered from the sources to destinations under strict latency and medium access constraints. In particular, analytical results are presented for two scenarios: For a single relay that forwards packets from musers, relaying strategies are provided that minimize the packet drops when the source nodes and the relay generate independent transmission schedules. A relay using such an independent scheduling strategy is undetectable by an eavesdropper and is referred to as a covert re...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Parvathinathan Venkitasubramaniam, Ting He, Lang Tong
• Keywords: Anonymity, CORR 2007, Covert Relay, Education, Network Performance