Performance of path allegiance metric based routing protocol under varying disbelief threshold of a trust management framework

The design of path allegiance metric (PAM) based routing protocol leverages upon a trust management framework proposed in our earlier works. The PAM routing protocol strives to provide data plane security in mobile ad hoc network and its working is based upon the belief, disbelief and uncertainty components of the trust management framework which assigns a trust metric based upon the packet forwarding characteristics of a node. The assessment of behavioral characteristics is done through Session Acknowledgement Reports (SAR) scheme covered in our earlier works. Specifically, the disbelief component plays a major role in the decision with regard to the inclusion of a node in the source to destination route. The parameter disbelief threshold of the PAM routing protocol stands for the maximum value of the disbelief component within the trust metric so as to include a node in the source to destination path. The value chosen for disbelief threshold plays a major role in the performance of the PAM routing protocol as a very high value may lead to many malicious packet droppers escaping detection and getting included in the path. A very small value for disbelief threshold leads to many false positives as many honest packet forwarders would be excluded from the path as they are wrongly treated as malicious packet droppers. The current paper focuses upon the impact of disbelief threshold on the performance of PAM routing protocol. Simulation analysis provides insights regarding the ideal value of disbelief threshold for the efficiency of PAM routing protocol and its efficiency in comparison with a related trust-based routing protocol called AOTMDV.