Distributed Trust Management for Secured Localization Systems in Mobile Cloud Services

The market for the Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding at an exponential rate. As IoT devices increasingly rely on cloud computing for data processing, storage, and management, the security of cloud-based IoT services becomes paramount. Many of these services depend on the IoT device’s location. Therefore, secured localization systems are necessary. However, traditional security techniques are resource-consuming. An alternative method for detecting localization attacks in IoT is through trust models. This paper proposes a distributed trust management technique for localization in Mobile IoT, specifically designed to enhance the security and trustworthiness of cloud-based IoT services. The trust of a node is computed based on its availability and service quality. Nodes use this information to calculate their neighbors’ and anchor nodes’ trust values. We simulated the proposed system using the Cooja simulator. The results show that the proposed trust-based localization technique can help unknown nodes mobilize and reach a target location, reducing the control group’s error by 186.4% at the cost of 4.8 µJ only. The system finds application in indoor localization for location-based cloud services, such as locating shops of items in shopping malls.