A Security Aware Fuzzy Enhanced Ant Colony Optimization Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

As mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) grow more popular and are deployed as solutions in various applications such as road safety (vehicular networks), wildlife tracking (wireless sensor networks) and device-to-device communications in 5G, the need for efficient routing that is robust against malfunctioning or malicious network nodes is increasing. We propose a security aware fuzzy enhanced ant colony optimization (SAFEACO) routing algorithm, which makes use of a fuzzy logic module to identify misbehaving nodes and exclude them from the routing process. We evaluate the SAFEACO routing algorithm, by comparing it with another modern and widely known approach and found that it shows superior performance in all relevant metrics, such as packet delivery ratio, delay and overhead. Due to its ability to identify misbehaving nodes, SAFEACO also provides a higher level of robustness against black hole and Sybil attacks.