Open Access

ARTICLE

A Reputation-Based AODV Protocol for Blackhole and Malfunction Nodes Detection and Avoidance

by Qussai M. Yaseen^1,2,*, Monther Aldwairi^2,3, Ahmad Manasrah^4,5

1 Artificial Intelligence Research Center (AIRC), College of Engineering and Information Technology, Ajman University, Ajman, 346, United Arab Emirates
2 Department of Computer Information Systems, Faculty of Computer and Information Technology, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, 22110, Jordan
3 College of Technological Innovation, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, 144534, United Arab Emirates
4 Faculty of Information Technology and Computer Science, Yarmouk University, Irbid, 21163, Jordan
5 Computer Information Systems, Higher Colleges of Technology, Sharjah, 341214, United Arab Emirates

* Corresponding Author: Qussai M. Yaseen. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2024, 80(2), 1867-1888. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2024.051179

Received 28 February 2024; Accepted 11 June 2024; Issue published 15 August 2024

Abstract

Enhancing the security of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) improves the usability of their applications. Therefore, finding solutions to various attacks, such as the blackhole attack, is crucial for the success of WSN applications. This paper proposes an enhanced version of the AODV (Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector) protocol capable of detecting blackholes and malfunctioning benign nodes in WSNs, thereby avoiding them when delivering packets. The proposed version employs a network-based reputation system to select the best and most secure path to a destination. To achieve this goal, the proposed version utilizes the Watchdogs/Pathrater mechanisms in AODV to gather and broadcast reputations to all network nodes to build the network-based reputation system. To minimize the network overhead of the proposed approach, the paper uses reputation aggregator nodes only for forwarding reputation tables. Moreover, to reduce the overhead of updating reputation tables, the paper proposes three mechanisms, which are the prompt broadcast, the regular broadcast, and the light broadcast approaches. The proposed enhanced version has been designed to perform effectively in dynamic environments such as mobile WSNs where nodes, including blackholes, move continuously, which is considered a challenge for other protocols. Using the proposed enhanced protocol, a node evaluates the security of different routes to a destination and can select the most secure routing path. The paper provides an algorithm that explains the proposed protocol in detail and demonstrates a case study that shows the operations of calculating and updating reputation values when nodes move across different zones. Furthermore, the paper discusses the proposed approach’s overhead analysis to prove the proposed enhancement’s correctness and applicability.

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