A split half reliability coefficient based mathematical model for mitigating selfish nodes in MANETs

The data dissemination among the wireless nodes in an ad hoc environment mainly depends on the cooperation maintained between them. This co-operation is essential for establishing both forward and reverse route as well as relaying the packets. Due to the limited availability of resources in an ad hoc scenario, some of the nodes may tend to drop the packets coming from their neighbor nodes while forwarding their own packets. This type of node's behavior is known as “selfish behavior”. In this paper, we devise and propose a mathematical model that could detect the selfish nodes based on the split half reliability co-efficient. This split half reliability is a two level consistency check mechanism, which is based on the aggregate number of packets entering and leaving a node at a time instant. The effective performance of the devised mathematical model is studied through ns-2 simulation with the help of parameters namely packet delivery ratio, control overhead, total overhead and throughput by varying the number of selfish nodes. The results of the experimental study depicts that this proposed model could detect the selfish nodes rapidly when compared to any other existing models available in the literature.