Enhancing Reactive Ad Hoc Routing Protocols with Trust

Yelena Trofimova,Pavel Tvrdík

doi:10.3390/fi14010028

Abstract

In wireless ad hoc networks, security and communication challenges are frequently addressed by deploying a trust mechanism. A number of approaches for evaluating trust of ad hoc network nodes have been proposed, including the one that uses neural networks. We proposed to use packet delivery ratios as input to the neural network. In this article, we present a new method, called TARA (Trust-Aware Reactive Ad Hoc routing), to incorporate node trusts into reactive ad hoc routing protocols. The novelty of the TARA method is that it does not require changes to the routing protocol itself. Instead, it influences the routing choice from outside by delaying the route request messages of untrusted nodes. The performance of the method was evaluated on the use case of sensor nodes sending data to a sink node. The experiments showed that the method improves the packet delivery ratio in the network by about 70%. Performance analysis of the TARA method provided recommendations for its application in a particular ad hoc network.

Highlights

If some particular combination of parameters produces a reasonable PDRavg, but at the same time the value of RDDmax is too high, it just means that the overhead of the route discovery is too high, and such combination of parameters is not acceptable
The Constant Delay function serves as a proof of concept that should show us whether the TARA method has the potential to improve the performance of an ad hoc network with untrusted nodes
Cooperation and trust establishment are the significant challenges in ad hoc network security

Summary

Introduction

Enhancing Reactive Ad Hoc RoutingProtocols with Trust. Future Internet2022, 14, 28. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi14010028Academic Editor: Paolo BellavistaReceived: 14 December 2021Accepted: 12 January 2022Published: 15 January 2022Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion