A Survey of Trust and Reputation Management Systems in Wireless Communications

Trust is an important concept in human interactions which facilitates the formation and continued existence of functional human societies. In the first decade of the 21st century, computational trust models have been applied to solve many problems in wireless communication systems. This cross-disciplinary research has yielded many innovative solutions. In this paper, we examine the latest methods which have been proposed by researchers to manage trust and reputation in wireless communication systems. Specifically, we survey the state of the art in the application of trust models in the fields of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and cognitive radio networks (CRNs). We classify the mainstream methods into natural categories and illustrate how they complement each other in achieving design goals. Major research directions are also outlined.