On the Implications of Adaptive Transmission Power for Assisting MANET Security

Mitigating misbehavior in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) requires effective intrusion response systems. In this work, we present an intrusion response scheme that is tailored to support the infrastructure less nature of MANETs. We propose a geographic solution towards excluding misbehaving nodes which is robust against address spoofing from the attacker. In particular, we investigate how an adaptive transmission power can be used to physically keep communication away from misbehaving nodes. We present different strategies for adapting transmission power taking into account effects of asymmetric links, and we provide a detailed performance evaluation based on a series of simulation studies. Our results show that the proposed solution significantly reduces the artificial packet loss that is introduced by geographic intrusion response strategies. Yet, we further observe side-effects of an adaptive transmission power on standard (non power-aware) MANET routing protocols.