A verifiable trust evaluation mechanism for ultra-reliable applications in 5G and beyond networks

Abstract With the development of Internet of Thing (IoT) joint 5G and Beyond Networks, Mobile Edge Users (MEUs) can act as mobile data collectors to collect data for various applications. However, some malicious MEUs reporting false or malicious data can cause serious harm to applications, especially for ultra-reliable applications. A novel Verifiable Trust Evaluation joint UAV (VTE-UAV) mechanism is proposed to select trustworthy MEUs to conduct the task for ultra-reliable applications. The VTE-UAV strategy adopts two novel trust evaluation methods, one is the aggregation-based MEU trust evaluation mechanism, when malicious evaluation objects are in the minority, the mechanism takes most evaluation results as baseline data. The other is an active trust acquisition mechanism, it takes the data obtained by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as baseline data to actively validate the authenticity of the data. Through these two cross evaluation strategies, we obtain more accurate trust evaluation results. Finally, this paper transforms the trust evaluation optimization problem into the optimization of the accuracy of trust evaluation with reducing the cloud payment and the dispatch cost of UAVs. Extensive experiments have verified the validity of the VTE-UAV strategy. Compared with the previous strategies, the VTE-UAV improves the cloud recruitment performance by 7.74%-25.91%, increases the accuracy of trust evaluation of IoT devices by 2.24%-11.72%, and reduces the cloud payment and the cost of UAVs by 3.11%-10.20% and 58.23%, respectively.