A Reputation-Based Mechanism to Detect Selfish Nodes in DTNs

Abstract

A delay tolerant network (DTN) is a complete wireless network. In a DTN there is no base station as it is in the case of existing wireless networks. Nodes may behave selfishly to transmit a message to save their own resources, such as energy. The cooperation requires detecting routes and transmitting the packets for other nodes, even though it consumes network bandwidth, buffer, and energy. A selfish node is a node that may be unwilling to cooperate to transfer packets. Such a node wants to preserve its own energy while using the services of others and consuming their resources. Many approaches have been used in the literature to implement the concept of non-cooperation in a simulated environment. However, none of them is capable of reflecting real cases and thus, the implementation of non-cooperative behavior needs improvement. In this paper, we focus on malicious and selfish node behavior, and we present a new classification and comparison between existing methods and algorithms to implement selfish nodes. Finally, we propose a new algorithm to implement selfish nodes in a DTN environment.