An Integrated Z-Number and DEMATEL-Based Cooperation Enforcement Scheme for Thwarting Malicious Nodes in MANETs

Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs) represent a group of mobile nodes that constitutes the network deprived of any pre-established infrastructure. In MANETs, the mobile nodes play an anchor role of a host and a router, thereby they possess the capability of sending and receiving the packet amid source and destination based on the cooperation rendered by the intermediary nodes of the routing path. However, existence of malicious as well as selfish nodes severally crumbles the performance of the network. The reputation-based cooperation approaches are essential for identifying malevolent and selfish nodes and segregate them from the network. At this juncture, multiple attribute decision making is confirmed to the ideal candidate for determining the reputation rank associated with the nodes during data dissemination. In this paper, An Integrated Z-number, and DEMATEL-based Cooperation Enforcement (IZ-DEMATELCE) scheme is contributed for finding the reputation of the mobile nodes for thwarting the impact of malevolent as well as selfish nodes in the network. This IZ-DEMATELCE-based reputation approach completely concentrates on identifying the weights and mutual influential relationships existing among the attributes that are used for confirming the malicious behaviour of mobile nodes. It adopts the merits of Z number-based reference ideal method for estimating the resilience potential of mobile nodes to incorporate appropriate decision-making strategies essential for isolating malicious nodes. It also uses the benefits of Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers to determine the information uncertainty and assesses the reliability/confidence of neighbouring nodes towards the nodes in the routing path that is monitored.