Quality of Service (QoS) and Security Provisioning in Cooperative Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs)

Cooperative communication can improve communication quality in wireless communication networks through strategic relay selection. However, wireless cooperative communication networks are vulnerable to the attacks initiated on relays. Although applying authentication protocols can secure cooperative communication when the selected relay is malicious, better system throughput could be obtained without executing authentication protocol when the selected relay is free from attacker’s attack. In this paper, a game theoretic approach is proposed to quantitatively analyze the attacking strategies of the attacker who chooses one relay to attack so as to make rational decision on relay selection and extent of applying authentication protocols, which reaches the trade-off between system security requirement and quality of service (QoS) in wireless cooperative communication networks.