This paper is a contribution in the field of security analysis on mobile ad-hoc networks, and security requirements of applications. Limitations of the mobile nodes have been studied in order to design a secure routing protocol that thwarts different kinds of attacks. Our approach is based on the Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP); the most popular hybrid routing protocol. The importance of the proposed solution lies in the fact that it ensures security as needed by providing a comprehensive architecture of Secure Zone Routing Protocol (SZRP) based on efficient key management, secure neighbor discovery, secure routing packets, detection of malicious nodes, and preventing these nodes from destroying the network. In order to fulfill these objectives, both efficient key management and secure neighbor mechanisms have been designed to be performed prior to the functioning of the protocol.
To validate the proposed solution, we use the network simulator NS-2 to test the performance of secure protocol and compare it with the conventional zone routing protocol over different number of factors that affect the network. Our results evidently show that our secure version paragons the conventional protocol in the packet delivery ratio while it has a tolerable increase in the routing overhead and average delay. Also, security analysis proves in details that the proposed protocol is robust enough to thwart all classes of ad-hoc attacks.