A statistical learning reputation system for opportunistic networks

Contacts are essential to guarantee the performance of opportunistic networks, but due to resource constraints, some nodes may not cooperate. In reputation systems, the perception of an agent depends on past observations to classify its actual behavior. Few studies have investigated the effectiveness of robust learning models for classifying selfish nodes in opportunistic networks. In this paper, we propose a distributed reputation algorithm based on the game theory to achieve reliable information dissemination in opportunistic networks. A contact is modeled as a game, and the nodes can cooperate or not. By using statistical inference methods, we derive the reputation of a node based on learning from past observations. We applied the proposed algorithm to a set of traces to obtain a distributed forecasting base for future action when selfish nodes are involved in the communication. We evaluate the conditions in which the accuracy of data collection becomes reliable.