Analysis of trust models in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A simulation based study

Abstract

The Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) has become a key communication technology in various domains such as, military defense networks, disastrous and rescue operational command centers, vehicular networks, etc. The dynamic topology and open wireless communication medium may potentially introduce various security threats in MANET. The recent research on MANET focuses on developing security enforcement mechanisms based on various trust models. However, most of the existing trust models are application specific which impose limitations on their applicability with changes in requirements, resource constraints, and behavioural dynamics. In this paper, we present a comparative study of various trust models in MANET with respect to their performance, security enforcing features, and usability. This study experimentally reveals the limitations of existing trust models. It also shows that their is a need for designing adaptive, multi-level trust models for MANET, that supports heterogeneous applications with different requirements and contexts.