Design, implementation and performance evaluation of security services for Underwater Acoustic Networks

Underwater Acoustic Networks (UANs), composed by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are part of a new network paradigm that is being proposed for different uses like ocean sampling, undersea explorations, environmental monitoring or distributed tactical surveillance. These kinds of network need efficiency and security, despite the high limits of the underwater acoustic communication (i.e. the high packet loss, the high delays and the limited bandwidth). In this work it is proposed a secure network discovery protocol able to protect the system from denial of service attacks. On top of the routing level a pub/sub system, specifically designed for the underwater networking, is built. Furthermore we added a mechanism to create an end-to-end connection among nodes and we improved efficiency and security in distribution of messages. Finally a prototype of the system is described and results of performance evaluation tests are shown