Rate allocation for multipath routing in wireless multihop networks with security constraints based on erasure channel modeling

Multipath routing can offer various advantages for wireless multihop networks. Among those advantages, in this paper, we focus on an advantage of multipath routing for security using the notion of information-theoretic security. We formulate an optimization problem that maximizes the transmission rate from a source node to a destination node with information-theoretic security constraints to avoid eavesdropping that can be carried out at some nodes within a wireless multihop network. Binary erasure channel (BEC) modeling is employed to model wireless links that suffer from fading and interference. It is shown that the proposed throughput maximization problem is a linear optimization problem and the optimal rate allocation can be found by standard optimization techniques. We also study performance analysis including an asymptotic analysis to see whether or not multipath routing (with equal rate allocation) could be secure in terms of an information-theoretic security point of view. Through performance analysis, we can show that multipath routing can provide not only more secure routing against eavesdropping, but also a higher throughput as more multipaths are available. © 2012 IEEE.