A trust propagation scheme in VANETs

In vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), a source node must rely on other nodes to forward its packets on multi-hop routes to the destination. Trust propagation is the principle by which new trust relationships can be derived from pre-existing trust relationship. Modeling for trust propagation is a fundamental block in an ad hoc environment. The main contribution of this work is a novel scheme to enhancing trust propagation in VANETs. We achieve trust routing by introducing the concept of attribute similarity to find some potential friendly nodes among strangers. Based on similarity degree we put forward a new forwarding behavior. Also we give the recommendatory methods to calculate the similarity degree of attribute. We present numerical results which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed trust propagation scheme. Our work appears to be the first to incorporate attribute similarity into trust routing in VANETs.