Truthful and Secure Routing in Ad Hoc Networks with Malicious and Selfish Nodes

Cooperation among nodes is important in ad hoc networks since in such networks nodes depend on each other for forwarding packets. However, cooperation in such operations consumes nodes energy and recourses. Therefore, it is necessary to design incentive mechanisms to enforce nodes to forward packets when the source and destination of the packet are other nodes in the network. We study routing in ad hoc and wireless networks from a game theoretic view point. Based on this view, the network consists of selfish and greedy nodes who accept payments for forwarding data for other nodes if the payments cover their individual costs incurred by forwarding data. Also, route falsification attacks are easy to launch by malicious nodes in ad hoc networks. These nodes falsify data and routes in the network. Thus, mitigating this attack is vital for the performance of the whole network. Previous routing protocols in ad hoc networks inspired by game theory just consider that network consists of selfish nodes. In this work, we consider that the network consists of malicious nodes too. Here we present a truthful and secure mechanism for routing in ad hoc networks that cope malicious and selfish nodes.