Formal Methods for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A Survey

In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), communication is wireless and nodes can move independently. Properly analyzing the functional correctness, performance, and security of MANET protocols is a challenging task. A wide range of formal specification and analysis techniques have been employed in the analysis of MANET protocols. This survey presents an overview of rigorous formal analysis techniques and their applications, with a focus on MANET routing protocols. Next to functional correctness, also real-time properties and security are considered. Moreover, an overview is given of formal frameworks that target MANETs specifically, as well as mobility models that underlie performance analyses of MANET protocols. The aim is to give a comprehensive and coherent overview of this rather scattered field, in which a variety of rigorous formal methods have been applied to analyze different aspects of a wide range of MANET protocols.