Reliable link reversal routing for mobile ad-hoc wireless networks

Ad-hoc networks are generally made up of a number of mobile nodes, each having a restricted range wireless transceiver. All participating nodes execute special routing protocols that enables multi hop communication despite a dynamic topology. The temporally ordered routing algorithm (TORA) is one such routing protocol that is frequently used to establish routes in an ad-hoc network. For precise execution of the various network services, including routing, it is imperative that all nodes depict sustained benevolent behaviour. However, such an altruistic setting would never work in a wireless environment, which is intrinsically physically insecure. As a result, participating malicious nodes may launch an array of attacks against the network services. In this paper, we present an improved variant of the TORA protocol that uses the inherent characteristics of the routing process to assess the trust in the network nodes. These trust levels are then used to influence the routing decisions so as to circumvent malevolent nodes in the network. Extensive simulations indicate that the throughput of reliable TORA protocol surpasses that of the standard TORA by as much as 20% when as many as 40% of the nodes are acting maliciously in the network.