Theses and Dissertations Collection

Context—Mobile computing and communication devices are ubiquitous and can form mobile ad hoc networks (MANets). This may be particularly useful when device density may provide communications when Cellular, WAN, or LAN infrastructure is unavailable. Problem— Trust is subjective in the sense that the trustor determines the evaluation criteria on which to judge a potential trustee. Assessing the trust of MANet nodes is an ongoing research problem. Previous mobile ad-hoc network (MANet) trust research focuses on the behavior of nodes already operating in a MANet or on recommendations of other nodes. Previous trust research does not consider node location behavior as a potential avenue for measuring trust before allowing a node to join the MANet. Solution—This dissertation provides an objective metric for calculating node trust based on the capability, commitment, and consistency of node geographic behavior. In this dissertation, I describe an approach to measure node behavior defined as repeated and lasting physical presence in geographic locations to calculate a trust value. The approach measures node presence at geographic locations for at least a minimum duration repeatedly over time as defined by a MANet operator. This approach provides a way for MANet operators to qualify node behavior prior to deploying the node in a MANet, and to monitor node behavior to ensure conformance to MANet manager’s expectations for that behavior. Contributions— 1: Created a novel method for building trust based on location behavior on mobile nodes (MACH-T). 2: Designed, implemented, and tested an algorithm and corresponding software implementation for MACH-T. 3: Designed and performed six experiments for evaluating MACH-T and evaluated MACH-T’s performance under difference scenarios using real location data in the first five experiments and synthetic data in the sixth. Results—I found that MACH-T can build a useful and reliable trust measure, and corresponding confidence measure, based on mobile node location data. MANet operators could use MACH-T to measure trust of mobile nodes based on location behaviors.