An Efficient Trust-Based Reputation Protocol for Wireless and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: Proof and Correctness

The security of wireless and mobile networks has an important influence on the performance of these networks. As a result, many approaches have been developed to enhance their security. Recently, the technique of trust and reputation evaluation has attracted much interest, since it can evaluate the trustworthiness of nodes in a centralized way. This paper addresses the issue of efficient reputation evaluation in wireless networks via a distributed approach. We first present the trust relationship between two entities before formalizing the concept of the community to be established over the trusted nodes. A generalized computational reputation prototype is formulated and a set of reputation management mechanisms is established to effectively prevent malicious nodes from entering the trusted community. Through the proof of the prototype´s correctness, our system is analyzed to show how it offers provable security properties and prevents improper behaviors within a community.