ELRP: A Trust and IDS-Integrated Opportunistic Routing Protocol for MANETs with NS2-Based Evaluation

Abstract

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are widely used in diverse situations where secure communication and reliability are necessary. MANETs without a centralized infrastructure are prone to various security threats. This paper presents an Enhanced Lightweight Trusted Routing Protocol (ELRP) to ensure secure connectivity and reliability in MANETs. The primary goal of ELRP is to prevent the inclusion of malicious hosts in the route and reliably convey data. Trust metrics provide secure communication by leveraging quality of service parameters to optimize trust computation. Opportunistic routing enhances data reliability and consistency. It allows each node to choose an intermediate node dynamically based on trust levels. Depending on the trust factor, ELRP enables nodes to select the forwarder at runtime. ELRP features an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) designed to recognize and mitigate black and grey hole attacks. ELRP is scalable as it uses local information and does not consume computational resources. Simulations conducted in NS2 demonstrate that ELRP improves throughput by approximately 22%, increases packet delivery ratio by 14.4%, and reduces end-to-end delay by 37.1% compared to standard AODV under malicious attack scenarios.