Digital Twins with Stackelberg Game for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks’ Security

A Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) is a decentralized, self-configuring wireless network established by mobile nodes, which collaborate to route data through multi-hop communication. Due to their dynamic topology and lack of centralized control, MANETs are particularly susceptible to a wide range of security threats including flooding attacks, black hole attacks, wormhole attacks, and selfish attacks. The adversarial nodes often exhibit benign behavior to gain the network’s trust, thereby making detecting and mitigating such threats a significant challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism named Digital Twin-Based Stackelberg Game for AODV (DTSGAODV), which aims to detect and circumvent malicious nodes without modifying existing network routing protocols. Our approach integrates digital twin technology with the Stackelberg game and operates across two principal layers: the physical layer and the digital layer. The digital layer leverages information from the physical layer and applies the Stackelberg game to select optimal reference nodes, enabling the construction of a secure route between the source and destination. The physical layer gathers real-time network information and ensures data transmission along the secure route determined by the digital layer, adhering to the AODV protocol. Finally, we compare the performance of AODV and DTSGAODV when both are under a selfish attack to measure the improvement achieved by our suggested scheme. Through experiments, our solution is shown to be efficient by achieving a minimal value of attack success rate and the highest value of packet delivery ratio compared to AODV protocol.