A Trust Modeling Framework for Message Propagation and Evaluation in VANETs

In this paper, we present a trust-based message propagation and evaluation framework in vehicular ad-hoc networks where peers share information regarding road condition or safety and others provide opinions about whether the information can be trusted. More specifically, our trust-based message propagation model collects and propagates peers´ opinions in an efficient, secure and scalable way by dynamically controlling information dissemination. The trust-based message evaluation model allows peers to evaluate the information in a distributed and collaborative fashion by taking into account others´ opinions. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed framework promotes network scalability and system effectiveness in information evaluation under the pervasive presence of false information, which are the two essentially important factors for the popularization of vehicular networks.