HEAD: A Hybrid Mechanism to Enforce Node Cooperation in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks rely on the cooperation of nodes for routing and forwarding. However, it may not be advantageous for individual nodes to cooperate. In order to make the mobile ad hoc network more robust, we propose a scheme called HEAD (a hybrid mechanism to enforce node cooperation in mobile ad hoc networks) to make the misbehavior unattractive. HEAD is an improvement to OCEAN (observation-based cooperation enforcement in ad hoc networks). It employs only first hand information and works on the top of DSR (dynamic source routing) protocol. By interacting with the DSR, HEAD can detect the misbehavior nodes in the packet forwarding process and isolate them in the route discovery process. In order to detect the misbehavior nodes quickly, HEAD introduces the warning message. In this paper, we also classify the misbehavior nodes into three types: malicious nodes, misleading nodes, and selfish nodes. They all can be detected by HEAD, and isolated from the network.