Cooperation enforcement in a highly dynamic mobile ad hoc network

Operations of mobile ad hoc networks rely on the collaboration of participating nodes to route data for each other. This standard approach using a fixed set of nodes for each communication link cannot cope with high mobility due to a high frequency of link breaks. A recent approach based on virtual routers has been proposed to address this problem. In this new environment, virtual routers are used for forwarding data. The functionality of each virtual router is provided by the mobile devices currently within its spatial proximity. Since these routers do not move, the communication links are much more robust compared to those of the conventional techniques. In this paper, we investigate techniques to enforce collaboration among mobile devices by identify and punish misbehaving users in supporting the virtual router functionality. Simulation results based on various system configurations are given. They indicate that the proposed technique is effective.