Robust and efficient communication overlays for trust authority computations

This paper presents a novel algorithm for enhancing the efficiency and robustness of distributed trust authority protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Our algorithm determines a quorum of trust authority nodes required for a distributed protocol run based upon a set of quality metrics and establishes an efficient routing strategy to contact these nodes. An implementation and efficiency analysis illustrates the viability of our algorithm for small tactical networks consisting of 50 to 150 nodes and shows an approximate 32% reduction in communication overhead over traditional broadcast-based approaches to trust authority computations.