Mitigating Malicious and Unintentional Packet Drops in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks' adaptability, flexibility, and autonomous characteristics make them suitable for critical applications like healthcare, military, and disaster recovery with cost-effective and time-effective deployment.However, these characteristics make them vulnerable to packet operation at the network layer, as packets get dropped due to malicious activities and resource constraints, i.e., unintentional packet drops.Packet drops directly negatively impact network performance regarding throughput, delay, and wastage of resources.Existing solutions either focus on mitigating malicious or unintentional packet drops, but fail to address both simultaneously.The work mitigates unintentional packet drops by dynamic multi-metric routing that adapts to the dynamic conditions of the network by computing the route by Current Residual Energy (CR) and Residual Buffer Space Metric (RBM).Moreover, work mitigates malicious packet drops by authenticated key agreements and cryptographic decisions.Performance results indicate that the proposed work significantly improves packet delivery and energy efficiency and reduces overhead compared to existing mechanisms.