Certain limitations of reputation--based schemes in mobile environments

Cooperation based on reputation--based trust schemes in mobile ad hoc networks has been proposed with the intention of securing networks against possible selfish behavior. Selfishness is defined as refusal of (non--malicious) nodes to participate in network activities such as packet forwarding. We analyze the effectiveness of one such cooperation enforcement mechanism, namely reputation--based cooperation, using a simulated ad hoc network environment. The energy consumption of selfish nodes is also analyzed, to identify whether selfish behavior is actually beneficial to a node, and thus, whether selfish behavior is something that might actually be observed in a real ad hoc network. We find that reputation--based cooperation enforcement is only effective in non--mobile ad hoc network environment, however, we also find evidence that selfish behavior may not have benefits when the cost of energy consumption of a node is considered.