A System of Umpires for Security of MANET

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self-created self-organized and self-administering set of nodes connected via wireless links without the aid of any fixed infrastructure or centralized administrator. Protecting the network layer from malicious attacks is an important and challenging issue in both wired and wireless networks and the issue becomes even more challenging in the case of MANET. In this paper we propose an umpiring system (US) that provides security for routing and data forwarding operations. We present three US models - Single Umpiring System (SUS), Double Umpiring System (DUS), and Triple Umpiring System (TUS). In the umpiring system, each participating node of the system will have different roles to play; some of the nodes will be doing traditional operations of routing and packet forwarding, while some others will be monitoring the behavior of designated nodes. If any misbehavior is noticed umpires immediately flag off the guildy node. US do not apply any cryptographic techniques on the routing and packet forwarding messages. We have demonstrated the umpiring system by implementing it on popular AODV protocol. Extensive simulation studies using QualNet 4.5 establish the soundness of the proposal.