Trust Computations and Trust Dynamics in Mobile Adhoc Networks: A Survey

Trust is an important aspect of mobile adhoc networks (MANETs). It enables entities to cope with uncertainty and uncontrollability caused by the free will of others. Trust computations and management are highly challenging issues in MANETs due to computational complexity constraints, and the independent movement of component nodes. This prevents the direct application of techniques suited for other networks. In MANETs, an untrustworthy node can wreak considerable damage and adversely affect the quality and reliability of data. Therefore, analyzing the trust level of a node has a positive influence on the confidence with which an entity conducts transactions with that node. In this work we present a detailed survey on various trust computing approaches that are geared towards MANETs. We highlight the summary and comparisons of these approaches. In addition, we analyze various works on trust dynamics including trust propagation, prediction and aggregation algorithms, the influence of network dynamics on trust dynamics and the impact of trust on security services.