DEBH: detecting and eliminating black holes in mobile ad hoc network

Security in mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is one of the key challenges due to its special features e.g. hop-by-hop communications, dynamic topology, and open network boundary that received tremendous attention by scholars. Traditional security methods are not applicable in MANET due to its special properties. In this paper, a novel approach called detecting and eliminating black holes (DEBH) is proposed that uses a data control packet and an additional black hole check table for detecting and eliminating malicious nodes. Benefiting from trustable nodes, the processing overhead of the security method decreases by passing time. Ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing protocol is used as the routing protocol in our design. After finding the freshest path using AODV, our design checks the safety of selected path. In case of detecting any malicious node, it is isolated from the entire network by broadcasting a packet that contains the ID of malicious nodes. Simulation results show that DEBH increases network throughput and decreases packet overhead and delay in comparison with other studied approaches. Moreover, DEBH is able to detect all active malicious nodes which generates fault routing information.