Trust features-based friendship mechanism for mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is one of wireless technologies that gains widespread use nowadays. Since ad hoc network does not have fixed infrastructure such as access point that it can rely on, the nodes operate in promiscuous mode and are vulnerable to attacks and service disruption especially from the existence of selfish nodes. This research focuses on how to motivate cooperation and trust among mobile nodes and thwart away malicious nodes without using complex computational process. The goal of this research is to provide a secure mechanism for MANET by enhancing cooperation and trustworthiness among mobile nodes by using friendship mechanism and trust features. The creation of friendship mechanism is inspired from the concept of small-world phenomenon. The main contributions of this research are the enhancement of friendship mechanism’s algorithm with trust features and also enhancement of Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol’s algorithm to gain secure data transmission’s path. The definition of secure path in this research is that the path that will be established only consists of nodes that are listed in the trusted friends’ list. This means that nodes will not transmit data amongst anonymous nodes that are not listed as trusted friends. All the developed algorithms in this research were demonstrated through Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) software. The results show that although the relationships of trusted nodes are decreased after implementing trust features, it is an acceptable trade off for obtaining more trusted friends and secure paths in AODV. This is proven by the good performances obtained through experiment in terms of packet delivery fraction, normalized routing load and packet loss where under malicious attacks, the proposed work could protect the AODV routing protocol from being severely affected. This research provides a good alternative to secure MANET in such a way that it provides a platform for nodes to exchange information safely in a trusted community.