Fault-tolerant routing in adversarial mobile ad hoc networks: an efficient route estimation scheme for non-stationary environments

Abstract

Designing routing schemes that would successfully operate in the presence of adversarial environments in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) is a challenging issue. In this paper, we discuss fault-tolerant routing schemes operating in a network with malfunctioning nodes. Most existing MANET protocols were postulated considering scenarios where all the mobile nodes in the ad hoc network function properly, and in an idealistic manner. However, adversarial environments are common in MANET environments, and misbehaving nodes certainly degrade the performance of these routing protocols. The need for fault tolerant routing protocols was identified to address routing in adversarial environments in the presence of faulty nodes by exploring redundancy-based strategies in networks. It turns out that since the nodes are mobile, the random variables encountered are non-stationary, implying that estimation methods for stationary variables are inadequate. Consequently, in this paper, we present a new fault-tolerant routing scheme that invokes a stochastic learning-based weak estimation procedure to enhance a route estimation phase, which, in turn, is then incorporated in a route selection phase. We are not aware of any reported method that utilizes non-traditional estimates to achieve the ranking of the possible paths. The scheme, which has been rigorously tested by simulation, has been shown to be superior to the existing algorithms.