Trust-based ad hoc on-demand multipath distance vector routing in MANETs

Mobile Ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are self-organizing multi-hop wireless networks composed of independent mobile nodes. Due to the characteristics of dynamic topology and limited resources, MANETs are vulnerable to attacks from malicious nodes. However, traditional security policies with encryption and authentication cannot be well suited for MANETs, because of absence of trusted third party. In order to decrease hazards from malicious nodes, the concept of trust has been introduced to MANETs. In this paper, we first propose a novel trust model, in which nodes calculate trust value according to multiple events including historical interactions, interactions context factors and recommendations from neighbor nodes. Then the model is introduced into AOMDV, forming a novel trusted multipath routing protocol, termed as Trust-based Ad Hoc On-demand Multipath Distance Vector protocol (TAOMDV). The TAOMDV provides a flexible way to select the shortest path or multiple shortest paths from all trust satisfied paths to balance load. Experiments show that TAOMDV improves significantly in network loss ratio and average end-to-end latency.