1.1.

Introduction
1.2. Context and Background
Seamless communication has turned out to be a basic building-block of contemporary society.
This paradigm is highly enabled by wireless and mobile communication by offering a seamless
connectivity. The world is considered to be a global village because of wired and wireless
networks which are the most considerable technological breakthroughs in the recent past. A
surprising evolution has been experienced by such networks in terms of technological potentials,
worldwide utilization by millions of users to connect anywhere, anytime and at a reasonable cost.
Communication networks are grouped into two main categories. One of the two is infrastructure
based network where gateways are fixed and mobile nodes communicate with these gateways
through nearest base stations or access points. Local area networks (LAN), Wide Area Networks
(WAN) , Personal Area Networks (PAN), Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) Wireless Local
Area Networks (WLAN) and cellular networks are the most significant examples of such
category. Infrastructure-less network is the second category of communication networks where
there is no concept of access points or base stations. Nodes in such category of network posses
routing capabilities and they have random topology. Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET) and
Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) are the paradigms of such network.
Primarily, the cellular networks are considered to be a revolutionary technology as it had great
impact on the daily life of its users; afterwards, the broadband networks like WIMAX, WLAN,
Mobile broadband and UWB are making swift growth. Multi-hop, multi radio WMNs have got
most fame among research community and telecom industries due to existence of so many
unresolved challenges that must be addressed before utilization of WMN at large scale.
Currently, high broadband coverage solutions are provided by the WMN not only to home users
but it also facilitates a number of commodities and industries. There are so many difficulties in
deployment of other broadband networks. They need to be controlled and managed centrally.
Moreover, they require an expensive maintenance cost. WMNs have overcome all these
difficulties as they are decentralized, easily deployable, self-configuring, self-healing networks
and requires low maintenance cost. WMN is used for so many applications like building
automation, community / metropolitan area networking and broadband networking. WMNs may

also be used to provide backhaul in rescue operations and industrial controls. Due to such
applications, WMN made life of users effortless.
Regardless of all these traits, the multi-radio, multi-hop WMNs are vulnerable to some serious
security threats due to the open wireless medium access and dynamic topological changes of
WMNs. These security threats not only affect the confidentiality of the end users but also the
entire network can be fallen down by these security threats [1, 2]. Distributed Denial of Service
(DDOS) is one of the most destructive security attacks as it can compromise both integrity and
availability of WMNs. The main intension of DDOS attack is either to absolutely tie up
resources of the victim known as resource depletion attack or to fell down the complete network
by flooding the victim with huge traffic to prevent the traffic of valid users to access their
services known as bandwidth depletion attack. In distributed flood attack, thousands of
compromised nodes called zombies are involved to send huge amount of UDP or ICMP traffic
concurrently to victim with the aim to congest either its bandwidth or exhaust its resources [1].
For detection of such attack numerous mechanisms are proposed [4, 5] using different
approaches. It has been observed that the potential of technologies being used in these attacks are
becoming more and more superior. Hence, instead of using conventional approaches for securing
WMNs, some intelligent approaches must be considered. Detection mechanisms based on
artificial intelligence (AI) approaches provided promising alternatives. Among all AI approaches,
artificial neural networks (ANN) based approaches are considered to be more reliable and
accurate, showing high detection rates [4, 5, 6].
An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a paradigm of information processing that is motivated
by the means biological nervous systems (brain) process information. Structure of ANN is
consisted of huge number of highly interconnected neurons (processing elements) that works in
groups to solve particular problems. A Neural networks, with their outstanding skills to derive
meaning from a complex or vague data, can be utilized to detect trends and to extract patterns,
that seems very difficult to be noticed by either humans or other conventional computer
approaches. Like human beings, ANN learns by examples. In biological systems, learning
involves amendment to the synaptic connections that are existed among neurons. Exactly in
ANN, adjustment of connection weights is performed during training of the network. When an
ANN is trained using learning algorithms it can be considered as an expert in that particular class

on information for which it has assigned to analyze. ANN can be used in different applications
like classification, prediction, recognition, data filtering, data association and planning.
ANN can be distributed in two structures one is called feed-forward and other is known as
feedback ANN. Both the architectures are distributed among three different layers called input,
hidden (if any) and output layer. Main difference between both these architecture is the flow of
information. The network in which values of the output layer is traced back to the neurons in the
input layer by creating a loop in the network to get the desired output value is called feed-back
ANN. While in feed-forward ANN, information signal travels in only one direction i.e. from
input layer to the output layer through hidden layer. Learning of these ANN can be performed
through different algorithms which are categorized in two main categories i.e. supervised and
unsupervised learning algorithms. In supervised learning algorithms, each input vector of the
network is provided with its desired output value which is used to calculate the error of the
network in the output layer. Weights of the network are adjusted according to the error produced
in the output layer. Back-propagation learning algorithm is one of the simplest and most
commonly used feed-forward learning algorithms. While in un-supervised algorithms just inputs
are provided to the network. Just a guideline for construction of clusters is provided to the
network. In this type of ANN, weights of the connections are modified to assign same cluster to
the same input vectors. Self-organizing map (SOM) is one of the most common unsupervised
learning algorithms.