Analysis of malicious activity in delay tolerant networks

Abstract

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) is basically a disconnected mobile ad hoc Network. It is intermittent and sparsely connected because of limited transmission range and mobility. It is characterized by intermittent connectivity, long or variable delay, asymmetric data rate and high error rates. Many malicious nodes misbehave to hamper the network. Shielding algorithms for adhoc networks cannot be directly applied to DTNs due to dis-connectivity between DTN nodes. DTN nodes are energy constraint nodes and these malicious nodes degrade the energy and hampers message delivery in the network. So there exists the need to devise efficient defending mechanisms for preventing the Delay Tolerant Networks from such nodes. The paper has analyzed the impact of black holes on the network and proposed a defending model to isolate it from the network.