| dc.description.abstract | As a wider public is increasingly adopting mobile devices with diverse applications,
the idea of who to trust while on the move becomes a crucial one. The need to find
dependable partners to interact is further exacerbated in situations where one finds
oneself out of the range of backbone structures such as wireless base stations or
cellular networks. One solution is to generate self-started networks, a variant of
which is the ad hoc network that promotes peer-to-peer networking. The work in
this thesis is aimed at defining a framework for such an ad hoc network that provides
ways for participants to distinguish and collaborate with their most trustworthy
neighbours.
In this framework, entities create the ability to generate trust information by directly
observing the behaviour of their peers. Such trust information is also shared in order
to assist those entities in situations where prior interactions with their target peers
may not have existed.
The key novelty points of the framework focus on aggregating the trust evaluation
process around the most trustworthy nodes thereby creating a hierarchy of nodes that
are distinguished by the class, defined by cluster heads, to which they belong.
Furthermore, the impact of such a framework in generating additional overheads for
the network is minimised through the use of clusters. By design, the framework also
houses a rule-based mechanism to thwart misbehaving behaviour or non-cooperation.
Key performance indicators are also defined within this work that allow a framework
to be quickly analysed through snapshot data, a concept analogous to those used
within financial circles when assessing companies. This is also a novel point that
may provide the basis for directly comparing models with different underlying
technologies.
The end result is a trust framework that fully meets the basic requirements for a
sustainable model of trust that can be developed onto an ad hoc network and that
provides enhancements in efficiency (using clustering) and trust performance. | en_US |
