7. Conclusion
In this paper, the effects of malicious and uncooperative nodes were studied on opportunistic routing protocols in wireless mesh networks. More specifically, assuming that nodes in the candidate set follow perfect coordination, a new analytical model was designed and implemented using Discrete-Time Markov Chain (DTMC) to demonstrate the existence of malicious nodes. Additionally, in order to measure the effect of malicious nodes on the network, a new approach of calculating drop ratio was introduced. As an example of a malicious behavior, an implementation of a black-hole attack was introduced, after customization for opportunistic routing protocols. Finally, a comprehensive set of performance evaluation scenarios was designed and conducted, using both simulation and analytical studies on four well-known opportunistic routing protocols known as EXOR, POR, DPOR, and MTS. To summarize, evaluation results demonstrated that malicious nodes can significantly decrease the performance of wireless networks by preventing packets from reaching their destinations. Finally, by comparing results of simulations and analyses, we conclude that the proposed model is capable of demonstrating the effects of malicious nodes on opportunistic routing protocols. A possible direction for future works involves extending the proposed analytical model to include a defensive mechanism against malicious nodes, using a variation of trust and reputation systems.