When Watchdog Meets Coding

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new lightweight misbehavior detection scheme for wireless networks that combines watchdog monitoring with error detection coding, effectively identifying malicious activity even with limited observations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel integration of watchdogs and coding techniques to improve misbehavior detection efficiency and accuracy in wireless networks.

Findings

High probability detection with partial packet observation

Near-optimal throughput achievable while maintaining security

Linear operations on overheard packets are insufficient for detection

Abstract

In this work we study the problem of misbehavior detection in wireless networks. A commonly adopted approach is to utilize the broadcasting nature of the wireless medium and have nodes monitor their neighborhood. We call such nodes the Watchdogs. In this paper, we first show that even if a watchdog can overhear all packet transmissions of a flow, any linear operation of the overheard packets can not eliminate miss-detection and is inefficient in terms of bandwidth. We propose a light-weigh misbehavior detection scheme which integrates the idea of watchdogs and error detection coding. We show that even if the watchdog can only observe a fraction of packets, by choosing the encoder properly, an attacker will be detected with high probability while achieving throughput arbitrarily close to optimal. Such properties reduce the incentive for the attacker to attack.