A distributed advanced analytical trust model for VANETs

In this paper we propose a trust model based on a Markov chain in order to formalize the trust metric variation and its stability in the context of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). The proposed model takes into account not only the dynamic trust metric variation according to the vehicles behaviors, but also the constraints related to the monitoring process. In our model each vehicle can act as monitor and update the trust metric of its neighbors according to their behavior in the network. In addition, our model can be customized through different parameters like the trust interval and the number of transitions needed to reach the highest trust level. This flexibility enables to adapt the model according to the application context. The performance evaluation of the proposed model is presented with different parameters and two types of disruptive vehicles are taken into account: malicious and selfish. The obtained results show the resistance, the robustness and the incentive of the proposed model against the fluctuations of the vehicles behaviors.