Energy Efficient and Secure Multipoint Relay Selection in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Nodes in MANETs are battery powered which makes energy an invaluable resource. In OLSR, MPRs are special nodes that are selected by other nodes to relay their data/control traffic which may lead to high energy consumption of MPR nodes. Therefore, employing energy efficient MPR selection mechanism is imperative to ensure prolonged network lifetime. However, misbehaving MPR nodes tend to preserve their energy by dropping packets of other nodes instead of forwarding them. This leads to huge energy loss and performance degradation of existing energy efficient MPR selection schemes. This paper proposes an energy efficient secure MPR selection (ES-MPR) technique that takes into account both energy and security metrics for MPR selection. It introduces the concept of 'Composite Eligibility Index' (CEI) to examine the eligibility of a node for being selected as an MPR. CEI is used in conjunction with willingness to provide distinct selection parameters for Flooding and Routing MPRs. Simulation studies reveal the efficiency of ES-MPR in selection of energy efficient secure and stable MPRs, in turn, prolonging the network operational lifetime.