Modeling and Managing the Trust for Wireless and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

With the growing popularity of wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), many security concerns have arisen from MANETs especially in that misbehaving nodes pose a major threat during the construction of a trusted network. A reputation-based trust system can track the behavior of nodes and thereby proceed by rewarding well-behaving nodes and punishing misbehaving ones. However, existing techniques are usually either energy-consuming or complicated since the relevant reputation information is propagated throughout the network. In this paper, we propose a novel trust computation and management system, called TOMS, which not only establishes the new concepts of trust and community but also includes both the trust computation model and trust management mechanism. Using the results of extensive simulations, we highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of our trust system in comparison to other trust schemes in traditional protocols. Thus, TOMS is shown to be dynamic, distributed, and efficient, as well as sensitive to suspicious behaviors and peers.