PRIVO: A privacy-preserving opportunistic routing protocol for delay tolerant networks

Abstract

This paper introduces PRIVO, a PRIvacy-preserVing Opportunistic routing protocol for Delay Tolerant Networks. PRIVO models a DTN as a time-varying neighboring graph where edges correspond to the neighboring relationship among pairs of nodes. PRIVO ensures privacy by protecting each node's sensitive information even if it has to be processed elsewhere. In addition, nodes also compare their routing metrics in a private manner using the Paillier homomorphic encryption scheme. The effectiveness of PRIVO is supported through extensive simulations with synthetic mobility models and real mobility traces. Simulations results show that PRIVO presents on average cryptographic costs below 1% in most scenarios. Additionally, PRIVO presents on average gains of 22.2% and 39.7% in terms of delivery ratio for the synthetic and real scenarios considered, respectively.