Trust-Enhanced Multicast Routing Protocol Based on Node´s Behavior Assessment for MANETs

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring network of mobile nodes connected by wireless links without fixed infrastructure, which is originally designed for a cooperative environment. However, MANETs are subjected to a variety of attacks by malicious nodes, in particular for attacks on the packet routing. Compared with traditional cryptosystem based security mechanisms, trust-enhanced routing protocol could provide a better quality of service. In this study, we abstract a basic decentralized effective trust inference model based on node´s behavior assessment, where each peer assigns a trust value for a set of peers of interest. In this model, we introduce the ´voting´ mechanism to access the recommending experience (or ratings), in order to reduce the cost of the algorithm design and the system overhead. Then combined with this trust model, a novel trust-enhanced multicast routing protocol (TeMR) is proposed. This new protocol introduces the group-shared tree strategy, which establishes more efficient multicast routes since it uses ´trust´ factor to improve the efficiency and robustness of the forwarding tree. Moreover, it provides a flexible and feasible approach in routing decision making with trust constraint and malicious node detection. Experiments have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol.