Secure Routing in Airborne Networks

Airbone networks are envisioned to provide seamless connectivity for terrestial and space networks and eable a large number of applications. All these applications require proper routing security support to establish correct routes between communicating platforms in a timely manner. Although the airborne network shares some similarities with conventional wired and wireless networks, the security aspects valid in these conventional networks are not fully suitable to airborne networks due to their unique characteristics such as high mobility and mission-critical applications. The central theme of this effort is to develop an Efficient and Adaptive Routing Security(EARS) solution for airborne networks. In Phase I, we present a generic version of the EARS scheme, and in Phase II we will further refine our scheme by including new security mechanisms and customizing the solution to different routing protocols. The significant advantages of the proposed approach can be summarized as follows:1) it is impervious to network dynamics; 2) it can operate autonomously without an always-on connectivity to external servers; 3) it is efficient in terms of computation and communication overheads; and 4) it can be adaptive to different routing protocols. To our best knowledge, this work represents the first effort for routing security in airborne networks. BENEFIT: The proposed routing security solution has tremendous potential in military applications. Given the GIG vision, heterogeneous and dynamic RF networks will be common and therefore accurate and timely information delivery is necessary. The proposed algorithms and the developed simulation tool can be applied to various military networks for major programs like Tactical Targeting Network Technologies (TTNT) System, Network Common Data Link (N-CDL) system, Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, Future Combat System (FCS), FORCENET, etc. IAI is already a contractor on the Future Combat System (FCS) program. We are teamed with Honeywell on the FCS-Platform Soldier Mission Readiness System and with Northrop Grumman on FCS-logistic decision support system. We will leverage these relationships to identify the end military customer (e.g. FCS), and work with these teams to transition our Phase II technology into the FCS and other programs. In addition, our industry partner, Raytheon and Telcordia can also transition these technologies. The market for military applications is quite large.  Potential commercial applications of our proposed routing security approach include wireless ad hoc networks (MANETs), Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) and Wireless Vehicle Networks (WVN), where exist both the infrastructure and more mobile gedgeh networks. The size of the market is quite large and may grow rapidly with the commercial demand in network security, reliability and availability. We expect that the aggregate market size will be similar to or larger than that of military applications.