Abstract: The special characteristics of the mobile environment, such as limited bandwidth, dynamic topology, heterogeneity of peers, and limited power, pose additional challenges on mobile peer-to-peer (MP2P) networks. Trust management becomes an essential component of MP2P networks to promote peer transactions. However, in an MP2P network, peers frequently join and leave the network, which dynamically changes the network topology. Thus, it is difficult to establish long-term and effective trust relationships among peers. In this paper, we propose a dynamic grouping based trust model (DGTM) to classify peers. A group is formed according to the peers’ interests. Within a group, mobile peers share resources and tend to keep stable trust relationships. We propose three peer roles (super peers, relay peers, and ordinary peers) and two novel trust metrics (intragroup trust and intergroup trust). The two metrics are used to accurately measure the trust between two peers from the same group or from different groups. Simulations illustrate that our proposed DGTM always achieves the highest successful transaction rate and the best communication overhead under different circumstances.

Key words: Mobile P2P networks, Trust management, Dynamic grouping, Super peer

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