Witness-Based Detection of Forwarding Misbehaviors in Wireless Networks

We consider the problem of identifying a node that incorrectly forwards packets in a static wireless ad hoc network. We propose a detection scheme that identifies a misbehaving node based on observations made by neighboring nodes (witnesses) near the forwarding node. Without longterm or cumulative observation, the proposed scheme makes an instantaneous decision about whether a node is correctly forwarding a packet. Through extensive analysis under various threat scenarios, we show that our scheme can unambiguously identify a misbehaving node when there is no collusion. We analyze our scheme´s detection accuracy accounting for the lossy nature of wireless links, finding that our scheme can achieve high detection accuracy while incurring low communication overhead.