The Evolution of Ids Solutions in Wireless Ad-hoc Networks to Wireless Mesh Networks

The domain of wireless networks is inherently vulnerable to attacks due to the unreliable wireless medium. Such networks can be secured from intrusions using either prevention or detection schemes. This paper focuses its study on intrusion detection rather than prevention of attacks. As attackers keep on improvising too, an active prevention method alone cannot provide total security to the system. Here in lies the importance of intrusion detection systems (IDS) that are solely designed to detect intrusions in real time. Wireless networks are broadly classified into Wireless Ad-hoc Networks (WAHNs), Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and the most recent Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). Several IDS solutions have been proposed for these networks. This paper is an extension to a survey of IDS solutions for MANETs and WMNs published earlier in the sense that the present survey offers a comparative insight of recent IDS solutions for all the sub domains of wireless