An energy efficient acknowledgement-based method for selfish node detection and avoidance in open MANET

Abstract

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET) is a decentralized infrastructure with relatively low capacity of connections for communication with the special measures described as a collection of autonomous mobile nodes. In such networks, weak communication links and node mobility can lead to highly unpredictable and dynamically changing topologies. Open MANET is one of the types of MANET in which any node is able to join or leave the network. Thus, it is vulnerable in oppose of selfish nodes which they do not like to spend their resources to participate in network activities such as routing. This helps them to preserve their limited energy while they have a huge negative impact on the network performance and total energy usage. One of the category of methods to for selfish node detection and avoidance is acknowledgement-based methods. Negative Acknowledgement (NACK) is the best method for detecting and avoidance selfish node in this category. The NACK method has high level of packet delivery, and high throughput in opposed of misbehaving action. However, this method suffers from extra charge by number of routing overhead, and more energy consumption when number of selfish nodes or mobility of nodes are increasing. In this study, using the Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) a new selfish node detection method has been developed called S-NACK. This method uses SACK instead of full TCP over the NACK. The proposed method was implemented in NS2 and its performance was compared with NACK. The extensive simulation results showed that S-NACK reduces the network overhead and improves the energy consumption in comparison to NACK whereas the packet delivery ratio is almost similar at the same time.