Secure Multicast Routing in MANETs for PBM Protocol

Abstract

A Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) consists of Mobile Nodes (MNs) without any centralized authority. Mobile nodes form a network over radio links due to its infrastructure less environment. Multicast routing plays a significant role in MANETs. Due to its features, such as dynamic network topology, limited bandwidth, and limited battery power, routing in MANETs becomes a tedious task. In the presence of malicious nodes, the MANET is vulnerable to various kinds of attacks. The MANET protocol is found to be more vulnerable due to the lack of centralized authority and also due to its dynamic nature. Position Based Multicast (PBM) protocol does not require any distribution structure and it avoids flooding of control packets. It uses the geographical locations of the intermediate nodes and the destination node to make the message forwarding decisions. Position-based routing is commonly regarded as highly scalable and very robust against frequent topological changes. However, there are several potential security issues for the development of position-based routing protocols. In this paper, we examine the various multicast routing attacks and a suitable countermeasure is provided against attacks using game theory in the existing Position Based Multicast (PBM) protocol in MANETs. The proposed countermeasure is evaluated using the performance metrics namely packet delivery ratio, End to End Delay and Control Overhead.