A Trust Based Cross Layer Security Protocol for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

In this paper, we develop a trust based security protocol based on a cross-layer approach which attains confidentiality and authentication of packets in both routing and link layers of MANETs. In the first phase of the protocol, we design a trust based packet forwarding scheme for detecting and isolating the malicious nodes using the routing layer information. It uses trust values to favor packet forwarding by maintaining a trust counter for each node. A node is punished or rewarded by decreasing or increasing the trust counter. If the trust counter value falls below a trust threshold, the corresponding intermediate node is marked as malicious. In the next phase of the protocol, we provide link-layer security using the CBC-X mode of authentication and encryption. By simulation results, we show that the proposed cross-layer security protocol achieves high packet delivery ratio while attaining low delay and overhead. Keywords-MANETs; Cross-Layer; Security Protocol; Encryption; authentication; Packet Delivery; Overhead.