Reputation based Routing in MANET using Blockchain

One of the core issues in routing packets within Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is the lack of trust and reputation of the participating nodes, which often leads to unreliable packet delivery. We use a fraction of nodes to validate routing actions taken by other nodes and leverage the distributed consensus mechanism in Blockchain networks to accrue the reputation of each node. Specifically, we employ heterogeneous difficulty for Proof of Work to represent the credibility of validation and design a scoring system to isolate malicious nodes via distributed consensus. The reputation of a node is then based on the combination of the difficulty level and the score. This reputation is incorporated in a novel routing metric to calculate the shortest, most reputed path between a source and destination node. The goal is to discourage malicious nodes by excluding those from participating in routing packets. A joint simulation of the Blockchain and routing algorithm reveal ≈12% improvement in overall packet delivery in the presence of routing attacks, compared to conventional routing algorithms in MANETs.