A Literature Survey on Secure and Energy-Efficient Routing Techniques in Manets

Abstract

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are decentralized wireless networks that enable mobile nodes to communicate without fixed infrastructure. Due to their dynamic topology, limited bandwidth, and lack of centralized administration, MANETs are highly vulnerable to security threats such as black hole attacks, wormhole attacks, Sybil attacks, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), sinkhole attacks, and Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. Researchers have proposed various secure and energy-efficient routing mechanisms to improve network performance, reliability, and protection against malicious activities. This literature survey reviews recent advancements in MANET security, trust management, intrusion detection systems, blockchain integration, machine learning-based attack detection, cryptographic approaches, and energy-aware routing techniques. Several studies emphasize the use of trust-based routing, artificial intelligence, clustering methods, optimization algorithms, and blockchain technologies to enhance packet delivery ratio, throughput, network lifetime, and attack detection accuracy. The survey also highlights the limitations of existing approaches, including computational complexity, scalability issues, dependence on centralized nodes, and lack of real-world validation. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of current research trends and identifies future directions for developing lightweight, scalable, secure, and energy-efficient MANET frameworks suitable for IoT, VANET, healthcare, and smart city applications.