Trust Management In Ad-hoc Networks: A Social Network Based Approach

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called œnodes, which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties (also called edges, links, or connections). Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.We propose a social network based approach for trust management in ad-hoc networks, where nodes trust, help and interact with each other to create a complex trust-worthy network. Keywords: Trust management, ad-hoc network, social network, attack.