Survey on handling passive nodes in MANETs

Abstract

This work handles the topic ad hoc networking between mobile devices and the specific problem of network nodes that choose not to forward messages. These nodes are called passive nodes. In our literature review of of Ad Hoc Mobile Wireless network protocols we identified three approaches: (i) incentives for active node, (ii) isolation of passive nodes. (iii) automatic active node detection. Our analysis of the existing approaches shows the best approach is categorized within the first category: the algorithmic mechanism design approach of applying a Vickery Clark Groves (VCG) mechanism to provide incentive to nodes to be active. This is a truthful mechanism which means that the most lucrative strategy for nodes is to always tell the truth about the required incentive in order to forward messages and always execute this action. The reason this happens is that the node will receive higher incentive than what they asked for when they are chosen to forward messages. In mobile ad-hoc networks the protocol needs to update routing tables therefore incentive requirements can be centralized with minimal impact on the performance of the protocol.