Balanced trust management for Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks are those which could be rapidly deployed anywhere without any infrastructural facilities. The topology will be very much dynamic and the entry and exit of nodes will be unpredictable. This makes the MANET more vulnerable to attacks. Security becomes more threatening due to the insecure admission of the nodes to the network. Variety of security protocols which successfully provide security to the Infrastructure based networks fails because of the Adhoc nature of the nodes. All these situations need more security at least to protect the information that is being transferred between the nodes. New nodes should not be allowed to communicate if the node is not trust worthy. To evaluate the Trust, In this paper we aim at designing some techniques by which a user can gain trust upon subsequent communications / Transactions made in the network so that, with that trust factor, the new nodes can join the network. This provides a better security since only trustworthy nodes will join the network.