An Efficient Trust-Based Reputation Protocol for Wireless and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: Proof and Correctness

The security of wireless and mobile networks has an important influence on the performance of these networks. As a result, many approaches have been developed to enhance their security. Recently, the technique of trust and reputation evaluation has attracted much interest, since it can evaluate the trustworthiness of nodes in a centralized way. This paper addresses the issue of efficient reputation evaluation in wireless networks via a distributed approach. We first present the trust relationship between two entities before formalizing the concept of the community to be established over the trusted nodes. A generalized computational reputation prototype is formulated and a set of reputation management mechanisms is established to effectively prevent malicious nodes from entering the trusted community. Through the proof of the prototype's correctness, our system is analyzed to show how it offers provable security properties and prevents improper behaviors within a community.