Securing Opportunistic Networks:
An Encounter-based Trust-driven Barter Mechanism


Arun Kumar1+, Sanjay K. Dhurandher2, Isaac Woungang3, and Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues4,5

 

1Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal, India

arun.k@manipal.edu

2Department of Information Technology, Netaji Subhas University of Technology, New Delhi, India

dhurandher@gmail.com

3Department of Computer Science, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

iwoungan@ryerson.ca

4Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), Teresina - PI, Brazil

5Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portuga

joeljr@ieee.org

 

Abstract

In an opportunistic network (OppNet), message forwarding among the nodes occurs by exploiting the direct contacts through intermittent end-to-end connectivity while relying on the cooperation among these nodes. As such, any misbehavior intention of some nodes may cause serious security threats in the network. To address this issue, several trust-based incentive schemes have been investigated in the literature, with the goal of stimulating the participation of nodes in the routing procedure. However, most of these protocols are susceptible to collusion attacks. In this sense, this paper proposes a secure and reciprocity Encounter-based Trust-driven Barter protocol (denoted ETB), which uses a cryptography mechanism to ensure resilience against collusion attacks in the network. Simulation results show a performance improvement of 19% on average over the IronMan protocol, chosen as benchmark scheme, on account of throughput, average delay, average number of hops, and overhead count.

 

Keywords: Opportunistic network (OppNet), Opportunistic mobile social network (MSN), Incentive scheme, Trust-driven barter protocol, Reciprocity.

 

+: Corresponding author: Arun Kumar
FC-2 Room No 18, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, MAHE, Karnataka, 576104, India, Tel:+91-7037226913

 

Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA), Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 99-113, June 2021 [pdf]

Received: December 2, 2020; Accepted: February 10, 2021; Published: June 30, 2021

DOI: 10.22667/JOWUA.2021.06.30.099