Background: MANET is a self-organized wireless network with no infrastructure. Especially data transfer from one system to another system needs to be done in a secure way. In order to provide data integrity, authentication plays an important role in data communication. RSA and ECC are widely used algorithms in the real world, but authentication using these algorithms is time-consuming. Towards this, various algorithms came into existence with different security primitives. However, it is important to design an effective key agreement process with reduced computational cost among these security mechanisms. We have designed an effective mechanism to mitigate packet dropping attacks to secure end-to-end communication in MANET. Objective: The proposed light weight authentication method is based on chaotic maps that uses Chebyshev polynomials as primitive operation. Methods: The methodology includes semi group property of Chebyshev polynomials and also the discrete logarithmic problem based chaotic maps that takes less time than these existing algorithms and evaluates with respect to attack Resilience, packet deliverya fraction, delay, throughput, and overhead. Results: Simulation produces the result of the proposed mechanism and give better performance in terms of packet delivery ratio, overhead and computational cost. Conclusion: Authentication based on developed mechanism consumes less time as shown in statistical analysis and mitigates packet dropping attacks effectively