A framework for secure routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes (hosts) which communicate with each other via wireless links either directly or relying on other nodes as routers. In general, routing protocols for MANETs are designed based on the assumption that all participating nodes are fully cooperative. However, due to the open structure and scarcely available battery-based energy, node misbehaviors may exist. One such routing misbehavior is that some selfish nodes will participate in the route discovery and maintenance processes but refuse to forward data packets. A threat to such multihop transmission is posed by selfish nodes, which may drop others packets to save their own bandwidth and battery life. Therefore, packet forwarding is a fundamental problem for wireless ad hoc networks. Solutions proposed so far are either reputation-based or credit-exchange-based, which are fundamentally context-based solutions. They need to accurately identify selfish behaviors, securely maintain the context, and appropriately punish selfish nodes. These requirements are difficult to satisfy. This proposed method implements a context-free protocol that does not rely on observation and selfish behaviour detection. Given a path, a context-free protocol can transmit packets through it without knowing whether the intermediate nodes are selfish or not. In this method, the data of a packet should be encrypted and the identity of the destination should only be revealed after all nodes forwarded the packet cooperatively.