Reputation management for data forwarding in opportunistic networks

In opportunistic networks, contacts between nodes are viewed as an opportunity to move data closer to the destination. Social routing is a method in which the messages are selectively forwarded through the nodes with which encounters are more likely to occur. One such social routing technique is forwarding the data through nodes that are known to be friends. But there is a possibility that the nodes which were friends earlier might become selfish or malicious in future. Hence it is necessary to monitor the friend nodes and identify the possibly malicious or selfish friends. This paper proposes a social routing protocol for opportunistic networks, which uses the reputation of the nodes in the network to make the decision of forwarding data.