A Reputation Mechanism to Stimulate Node Cooperation in Ad Hoc Networks

Packet forwarding in ad hoc networks relies on the cooperation among nodes. However, some selfish nodes will refuse to provide forwarding services to conserve their resources, which deteriorates the network performance. Reputation mechanism can reduce the selfish behavior of nodes. This paper proposes a simple and effective local reputation mechanism: LRM, which can stimulate the node cooperation to mitigate the selfish behaviors. Compared with the classic ¿OCEAN¿ mechanism, LRM only utilizes local information to derive node reputation, making the error-detected nodes quickly return to the network. Extensive simulations show that LRM can considerably improve the network through-put and packet delivery ratio.