NIS01-4: Trust Aware Routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In most MANET routing protocols security is an added layer above the routing layer. We propose a Trust-Aware Routing Protocol (TARP) for secure-trusted Ad-hoc routing. In TARP security is inherently built into the routing protocol where each node evaluates the trust level of its neighbors based on a set of attributes. TARP is based on three new concepts. First, for route establishment, a new secure ad-hoc routing mechanism is used. Second, six security parameters are considered in computing the trust-level of a node in a given route and include: software configuration, hardware configuration, battery power, credit history, exposure and organizational hierarchy. A secure route is established based on a confidence level prescribed by a user in terms of these attributes. Third, we present TARP reputation system and trust metric. Our performance evaluation shows that TARP is a robust trust routing algorithm that reacts quickly to the dynamics of the network.