A trust-based security environment in MANET: definition and performance evaluation

Abstract

Due to the lack of centralized administration or fixed network infrastructure, classic routing protocols cannot be applied in mobile ad hoc network (MANET). Hence, some specific ones have been proposed. Paradoxically, due to its importance in the MANET deployment, routing constitutes a privileged target of attackers. In addition, securing MANET constitutes a hard and challenging task that has attracted many researchers. For our concern, we proposed, in a previous work, a reputation-based trust management scheme built upon a recently proposed mobility-based clustering approach (MCA) which classifies nodes into clusters with one-hop members and elected cluster heads (CHs) and which maintains the organization of the network in the presence of mobility. The whole proposition, baptized trust-based MCA (TMCA), detects and isolates malicious behaviors. In order to improve network performance and to maintain its stability by avoiding the re-invocation of the clustering approach, we propose, in the first step of this work, a delegation process based on TMCA, baptized delegation TMCA-based (DTMCA). This delegation allows the CH to transfer its privileges to a chosen member in case of displacement or energy dissipation. In the second step, simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed DTMCA scheme. Finally, in the third step, we suggest to model the entire security process with its three components, namely MCA, TMCA, and DTMCA, in a layered manner. This is realized in order to show the different interactions between these three components.