Abstract

In Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), it is often difficult to maintain secure and reliable data transmission because the structure of the network keeps changing, devices have limited battery resources, and the system is vulnerable to various attacks. To overcome these challenges, this proposed research introduces a hybrid framework that combines multiple smart techniques for attack detection and secure routing. The proposed system brings together four different mechanisms, Optimized Ad hoc ON-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol, Dynamic Route Selection, Mobile Agent-Based Key Distribution (MAKD), and Packet Drop due to Attacker or Congestion (PDAC). The optimized AODV improves the basic routing process by finding routes faster, reducing delays, saving node energy, and ensuring smoother data delivery. The dynamic route selection method helps to the network adapt to real time conditions by avoiding overloading, so the data can flow without any delay. The MAKD mechanism uses mobile software agents to handle the safe exchanges of encryption keys between the devices, which eliminate the risk of central authority. Finally, the PDAC module can tell whether packet losses are happening because of the attackers interference, which improves the accuracy of attack detection and reduces false alarms. All these modules work together to create a smart, safe, and adaptive MANET environment that provides high data accuracy and privacy with better performance. The experimental results shows that the system achieves a packet delivery ratio of 97% with low end to end delay of 28%, and the lifetime of the network is increased by 22% when compare to the conventional AODV methods. Overall, the hybrid approach provides a stable, scalable, and efficient energy solution for secure communication in the MANETs and detect attack risk that arise in the MANETs, which makes the system safer and more reliable.