Sequence Number Validation-Enhanced Trust Routing using Probationary Confidence Mechanism in MANETs

Challenges in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) due to unpredictable movement of mobile nodes, nonexistence of centralized infrastructure makes it vulnerable to internal as well as external attacks. Instrument for managing route freshness happens to be there in AODV but it lacks trust. The traditional MANET routing protocols have the trust models; however, the model does not cop up with today's intelligent adversaries that control packet fields such as sequence number. This work targets a trust-model with hybrid routing mechanism that includes Probationary Confidence Value (PCV) and Sequence Number Validation (SNV) technique, targeting the routing reliability and security. PCV asses the nodes and place them into categories such as trusted, probationary and malicious, whereas SNV works on detection of sequence number replay and blackhole attacks in real time. The proposed hybrid work is evaluated using NS-2.35 simulator. Varying Mobility and attack scenarios were considered for nearest match of real-world scenario. Parameters such as Packet delivery ratio, trust detection and latency were analysed with that of AODV. A significant improvement was observed with 20% improvement in packet delivery ratio and trust detection up to 92.3% and considerable reduction in latency. The proposed system validate itself to be suitable for the MANET with all challenges as it improves trust mechanism with minimal addition of routing overheads.