Trusted routing in ad-hoc networks using pheromone trails

An ad-hoc network is built, operated and maintained exclusively through the cooperative behaviour of its constituent wireless nodes. Precision in routing demands that all network nodes portray persistent benevolent behaviour. This is however, difficult to achieve and so a number of malicious nodes participate in the route discovery process only to sabotage the network. In this paper we present a novel and pragmatic mechanism for establishing trust in ad-hoc networks using swarm intelligence. The proposed mechanism is based upon maintaining and sharing pheromone (trust) levels so as to find trustworthy routes. We believe that our model will be most suited to ad-hoc networks that can be created on-the-fly without any trust infrastructure.