Acknowledgment-based punishment and stimulation scheme for mobile ad hoc network

In this paper, we propose an acknowledgment-based punishment and stimulation scheme, called APS. The purposes are to punish malicious nodes dropping data packets and to stimulate the cooperation of selfish nodes. APS approach is structured around four interactive modules. The monitoring module monitors the correct forwarding of routing and data packets. The reputation module assesses the reputation of neighbors. We have proposed a reputation exchange method that enables nodes to share their recommendations about other nodes only within their neighborhoods, and the combination is done based on CIF rules (Combined trust on Importance Factor). The stimulator module is responsible for updating and managing the nodes credit accounts. The price and the reward in term of credit are determined based on the cooperativeness state of a node. Finally, the isolator module punishes both malicious and selfish nodes. The simulation results show that APS scheme increases the throughput and minimizes the malicious dropping ratio, while improving the success ratio of cooperative nodes, and reducing the success ratio and the isolation time of selfish nodes as well.