Reactive Identification of Misbehavior in Ad Hoc Networks Based on Random Audits

We address the problem of identifying misbehaving nodes that (selectively) drop packets, in order to degrade the network performance. Such nodes may agree to forward packets by participating in the route discovery process, but refuse to do so once the packets have been received. We propose a reactive approach where the source initiates an audit process if a significant performance degradation is observed. We employ a compact representation of the behavioral proof of a node by adopting Bloom filter structures and show that the misbehaving node can be identified based on random audits. Our approach provides significant energy savings compared to previously proposed methods that rely on reputation systems, or intensive acknowledgment schemes.