Efficient and Secure Routing in Multi-hop Wireless Network Using a Micropayment Scheme

In a multi-hop wireless network (MWN), a source node relays its packet through one or more intermediate nodes to the destination. When an intermediate node relays others packets, its energy and processing power are consumed. So some nodes do not forward other node's packets. But at the same time, they relay their own packets through other nodes. Such nodes are called selfish nodes. In order to stimulate these selfish nodes, micropayment based incentive schemes can be used. Two end nodes can communicate through other nodes only if they have sufficient credits to pay those intermediate nodes and an intermediate node will be paid for relaying other's packets. Similarly a node with lower credit than a threshold is considered as a possible malicious packet dropper and hence packets are not forwarded through them. But in this scheme, as the communication between nodes progresses, credit inflation and credit depletion may occur. In this paper we propose a technique to reduce these problems.