Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey

Wireless mesh networking has emerged as a promising technology to meet the challenges of the nextgeneration wireless communication networks for providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture and offering cost-effective business solutions to the service providers [1]. The potential applications of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are wide-ranging such as: backhaul connectivity for cellular radio access networks, high-speed wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs), community networking, building automation, intelligent transportation system (ITS) networks, defense systems, and city-wide surveillance systems etc [2]. Although several architectures for WMNs have been proposed based on their applications [1], the most generic and widely accepted one is a three tier structure as depicted in Fig. 1. At the bottom tier of this architecture are the mesh clients (MCs) which are mobile devices (i.e. users) with limited mobility and having resource constraints in terms of power, memory and computing abilities. At the intermediate tier, a set of mesh routers (MRs) or edge routers form an interconnected wireless back bone – the wireless mesh network (WMN). The MRs are wireless routers which wirelessly connect with each other and provide connectivity to the MCs. At the top tier of the architecture are a group of gateways or Internet gateways (IGWs). Each IGW is connected with several MRs using wired links or high-speed wireless links. The IGWs are connected to the Internet by wired links. A mesh network thus can provide multi-hop communication paths between the wireless clients (i.e., the MCs), thereby serving as a community network, or can provide multi-hop connectivity between the clients and a gateway router (i.e. an IGW), thereby providing broadband Internet access to the clients. Since deployments of WMNs do not need any wired infrastructures, these networks provide a very cost-effective alternative to the wireless local area networks (WLANs) for the mobile users for the purpose of interconnection and access to the backbone Internet [2]. Wireless technology standards such as IEEE 802.11 (WLAN), IEEE 802.15 (LoWPAN), IEEE 802.16 (mobile WiMAX), IEEE 802.10 are adapted for developing a new wireless standard for mesh networking IEEE 802.11s.