SUCCESS: A secure user-centric and social-aware reputation based incentive scheme for DTNs

Delay/Disruption tolerant networks (DTNs) are self-organized wireless ad-hoc networks, where end-to-end connectivity can not be guaranteed and communications rely on the assumption that the nodes are willing to store-carry-and-forward bundles in an opportunistic way. However, this assumption would be easily violated due to the selfish nodes which are unwilling to consume precious wireless resources by serving as bundle relays. To apply conventional reputation based incentive schemes in DTNs is extraordinarily challenging due to the unique network characteristics. To tackle this issue, in this paper, we propose SUCCESS, a secure user-centric and social-aware reputation based incentive scheme for DTNs. Different from conventional reputation schemes which rely on neighboring nodes to monitor the traffic and keep tracks of each other's reputation, SUCCESS allows a node to manage its reputation evidence and demonstrate its reputation whenever necessary. Two concepts, self-check and community-check, are defined for reputation evaluation according to the candidate's forwarding competency and the sufficiency of the evidence shown by the node itself, and for speeding up reputation establishment and forming consensus views towards targets in the same community, respectively. Extensive performance analysis and simulations are given to demonstrate the security, effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme.