Towards reliable self-clustering Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

With the introduction of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), nodes are able to participate in a dynamic network which lacks an underlying infrastructure. In this paper, we present a novel approach to improve the search efficiency and scalability of MANETs by clustering nodes based on trust mechanism. In our method, the trust relationship is formed by evaluating the level of trust using Bayesian statistic analysis, and clusters can be formed and maintained autonomously by nodes with only partial knowledge. Simulation results show that each node can form and join proper clusters based on their trust degree, and the cluster-based search algorithm with trust mechanism outperforms over those in current popular clustering models.

► This paper proposed a novel approach to improve the search efficiency and scalability of MANETs.
► A comprehensive Bayesian trust model is proposed to evaluate the trust degree of nodes.
► Experiments and case studies are carried out to evaluate our proposed method.