Comprehensive Approach to Addressing Misbehaving and Unintentional Packet Drops Nodes in MANETs to Improve the Network Performance

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) plays an important role in various fields; however, this network unavoidably encounters difficulties at the network layer primarily owing to misbehavior or malicious nodes. Among the issues plaguing MANETs, the deliberate and accidental dropping of packets by intermediate nodes emerges as a noteworthy problem requiring attention. The work proposes a novel routing protocol that aims to mitigate the packet dropping problem in a thorough yet efficient manner by selecting only neighbors with proven stability and integrity during route discovery. The protocol devises a neighbor node election tactic reliant on residual status of energy and buffer so that it can compute stable route and avoid those neighbors in route which are having constrained energy and buffer. Additionally, it deploys counter-based authenticated acknowledgments and promiscuous monitoring to enable integrity in route and counter malicious packet drooping. Simulation results show the protocol's efficacy, consistently outperforming existing algorithms in packet delivery and energy efficiency. In conclusion, this work systematically addresses the complexities introduced packet dropping nodes in infrastructure-less networks.