Trustworthy Systems

A rigorous analysis of AODV and its variants

Authors

Peter Hoefner, Rob van Glabbeek, Wee Lum Tan, Marius Portmann, Annabelle McIver and Ansgar Fehnker

NICTA

UNSW

University of Queensland

Macquarie University

Abstract

In this paper we present a rigorous analysis of the Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol using a formal specification in AWN (Algebra for Wireless Networks), a process algebra which has been specifically tailored for the modelling of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks and Wireless Mesh Network protocols. Our formalisation models the exact details of the core functionality of AODV, such as route discovery, route maintenance and error handling. We demonstrate how AWN can be used to reason about critical protocol correctness properties by providing a detailed proof of loop freedom. In contrast to evaluations using simulation or other formal methods such as model checking, our proof is generic and holds for any possible network scenario in terms of network topology, node mobility, traffic pattern, etc. A key contribution of this paper is the demonstration of how the reasoning and proofs can relatively easily be adapted to protocol variants.

BibTeX Entry

  @inproceedings{Hoefner_GTPMF_12,
    address          = {Paphos, Cyprus},
    author           = {H\"ofner, Peter and van Glabbeek, Robert and Tan, Wee Lum and Portmann, Marius and McIver, Annabelle
                        and Fehnker, Ansgar},
    booktitle        = {15th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Modelling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile
                        Systems (MSWIM 2012)},
    doi              = {10.1145/2387238.2387274},
    editor           = {{A.Y. Zomaya, B. Landfeldt and R. Prakash}},
    keywords         = {aodv; loop freedom; process algebra; routing protocols; wireless mesh networks},
    month            = oct,
    pages            = {203--212},
    paperurl         = {https://trustworthy.systems/publications/nicta_full_text/4911.pdf},
    publisher        = {ACM},
    title            = {A Rigorous Analysis of {AODV} and its Variants},
    year             = {2012}
  }

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