FLSAC: A new scheme to defend against greedy behavior in wireless mesh networks

The most commonly used medium access mechanism in wireless mesh networks is based on the CSMA/CA protocol. This protocol schedules properly the access to the medium among all the competing nodes. However, in a hostile environment, such as wireless mesh networks (WMNs), selfish or greedy behaving nodes may prefer to decline the proper use of the protocol rules in order to increase their bandwidth shares at the expense of the well‐behaving nodes. In this paper, we focus on such misbehavior and in particular on the adaptive greedy misbehavior of a node in the context of WMN environment. In such environment, wireless nodes compete to gain access to the medium and communicate with a mesh router (MR). In this case, a greedy node may violate the protocol rules in order to earn extra bandwidth share upon its neighbors. In order to avoid its detection, this node may adopt different techniques and switch dynamically between each of them. To counter such misbehavior, we propose to use a fuzzy logic‐based detection scheme. This scheme, dubbed FLSAC, is implemented in the MR/gateway to monitor the behavior of the attached wireless nodes and report any deviation from the proper use of the protocol. The simulation results of the proposed FLSAC scheme show robustness and its ability to detect and identify quickly any adaptive cheater. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.