A Subjective Trust Management Model with Multiple Decision Factors for MANET Based on AHP and Fuzzy Logic Rules

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self-organized system comprised by multiple mobile wireless nodes. Due to the openness in network topology and the absence of centralized administration in management, MANET is vulnerable to attacks from malicious nodes. In order to reduce the hazards from these malicious nodes, we incorporate the concept of trust into the MANET, and build a subjective trust management model with multiple decision factors based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) theory and the fuzzy logic rules prediction method - AFStrust. We consider multiple decision factors, including direct trust, recommendation trust, incentive function and active degree, in our model to reflect trust relationship's complexity and uncertainty from various aspects. It overcomes the shortage of traditional method, where the decision factors are incomplete. Moreover, the weight of classification is set up by AHP for these decision factors, which makes the model has a better rationality and a higher practicability. Compared to the existing trust management models, comprehensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the efficiency of our trust management model in the improvement of network interaction quality, trust dynamic adaptability, malicious node identification, attack resistance and enhancements of system's security.