Attack-resistant cooperation stimulation in autonomous ad hoc networks

In autonomous ad hoc networks, nodes usually belong to different authorities and pursue different goals. In order to maximize their own performance, nodes in such networks tend to be selfish, and are not willing to forward packets for the benefits of other nodes. Meanwhile, some nodes might behave maliciously and try to disrupt the network and waste other nodes' resources. In this paper, we present an attack-resilient cooperation stimulation (ARCS) system for autonomous ad hoc networks to stimulate cooperation among selfish nodes and defend against malicious attacks. In the ARCS system, the damage that can be caused by malicious nodes can be bounded, the cooperation among selfish nodes can be enforced, and the fairness among nodes can also be achieved. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results have confirmed the effectiveness of the ARCS system. Another key property of the ARCS system lies in that it is completely self-organizing and fully distributed, and does not require any tamper-proof hardware or central management points.