ESRS: An efficient and secure relay selection algorithm for mobile social networks

Abstract

Despite the extensive study on relay selection in mobile social networks (MSNs), few work has considered the fundamental problem of preventing information leakage to non-destination users. To the best of our knowledge, no existing work has taken both transmission latency (i.e. efficiency) and information leakage probability (i.e. security) into consideration for relay selection in MSNs. Therefore we target on designing an efficient and secure relay selection algorithm to enable communication among legitimate users while reducing the information leakage probability to other users. In this paper, a network formation game based relay selection algorithm named ESRS is proposed. We define the payoff functions of the users, design the game evolving rules, and prove the stability of the formed network structure. Extensive simulation is conducted to validate the performance of the ESRS algorithm by using both synthetic trace and real-world trace. The results show that our algorithm outperforms other algorithms by trading a balance between efficiency and security.