On eliminating packet droppers in MANET: A modular solution

In this paper we deal with misbehaving nodes in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) that drop packets supposed to be relayed, whose purpose may be either saving their resources or launching a DoS attack. We propose a new solution to monitor, detect, and safely isolate such misbehaving nodes, structured around five modules: (i) The monitor, responsible for controlling the forwarding of packets, (ii) the detector, which is in charge of detecting the misbehaving of monitored nodes, (iii) the isolator, basically responsible for isolating misbehaving nodes detected by the detector, (iv) the investigator, which investigates accusations before testifying when the node has not enough experience with the accused, and (v) finally the witness module that responds to witness requests of the isolator. These modules are based on new approaches, aiming at improving the efficiency in detecting and isolating misbehaving nodes with a minimum overhead. We describe these modules in details, and their interactions as well. We also mathematically analyze our solution and assess its performance by simulation, and compare it with the watchdog, which is a monitoring technique employed by almost all the current solutions. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved