Intelligent management of misbehaving nodes In wireless sensor networks

Misbehaving nodes in wireless sensor networks and ad hoc networks often disrupt the operation of the networks in more ways than one. Presence of such nodes results in congestion in paths, unreliable packet delivery and erroneous data outputs for wireless sensor networks. Existing literatures have addressed this problem using protocols with mechanisms to detect the presence of these misbehaving nodes and ignoring them altogether while delivering a packet. However, design and deployments costs are on the higher side for sensor nodes and ignoring a node entirely blocks a relay node for multiple paths passing through it resulting in inefficient use of resources. In this paper we introduce a protocol named as MMP (Misbehavior Management Protocol) to differentiate between a black hole node and a selective forwarding node. By differentiating between these two types of misbehaving nodes, paths can be chosen intelligently for the packets which might be blocked or might be allowed to pass through a node. Hence our protocol presents a misbehaving selective forwarding node as an operational node to sensors nodes whose packets are not being blocked by the node. This allows higher throughput, multiple options for selecting paths as well as more accurate data collection from the sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks.