Grey theory based reputation system for secure neighbor discovery in wireless ad hoc networks

Neighbor Discovery is a fundamental building block in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks. But the very nature of wireless mobile networks makes it easy to abuse neighbor discovery, such as the wormhole attack which relaying the HELLO packet between two far away nodes make them establishing the neighborship, and thus disrupting the routing function. In this paper, we present a reputation system for neighbor discovery that helps the node to assess the authenticity of the neighborship. The reputation system provides a scheme based on grey theory to compute the neighboring probability which requires less sample data. From building the reputation table, the neighbor node made by the wormhole would be marked the lower value. Through the analysis and simulation, the results show that it is efficient to avoid the harm brought by the wormhole in neighbor discovery.