Evaluating network layer selfish behavior and a method to detect and mitigate its effect in MANETs

A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is an infrastructureless network of autonomous devices formed dynamically. At network layer routing protocols in MANETs expect every node to cooperate in routing and data forwarding tasks. However, this cooperation leads towards a state in which nodes consumes their scarce resources for example battery power. Resource constraints of MANET nodes can derive dynamic selfish behavior in terms of not forwarding packets & not cooperating in routing operations. This can lead to degradation in network performance. In this paper, we first perform a simulation based study to evaluate the effects of selfish nodes on network performance. Then in contrast with most of the selfish node detection approaches in literature which are based on fully watchdog methods using promiscuous monitoring. We propose a proactive mechanism that first detects nodes that are exhibiting selfish behavior based on the factors which derives selfish behavior and then mitigate its effect on network performance. Initial simulation results of a case study shows that our method can detect & mitigate the effect of selfish behavior with an affordable overhead on the network.