A multidimensional trust evaluation model for MANETs

Abstract Effective trust management can enhance nodes' cooperation in selecting trustworthy and optimal paths between the source and destination nodes in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). It allows the wireless nodes (WNs) in a MANET environment to deal with uncertainty about the future actions of other participants. The main challenges in MANETs are time-varying network architecture due to the mobility of WNs, the presence of attack-prone nodes, and extreme resource limitations. In this paper, an energy-aware and social trust inspired multidimensional trust management model is proposed to achieve enhanced quality of service (QoS) parameters by overcoming these challenges. The trust management model calculates the trust value of the WNs through peer to peer and link evaluations. Energy and social trust are utilized for peer to peer evaluation, while an optimal routing path with a small number of intermediate nodes with minimum acceptable trust value is used for evaluation of the link. Empirical analysis reveals that the proposed trust model is robust and accurate in comparison to the state-of-the-art model for MANETs.