A Multi-Level Trust Framework for the Internet of Underwater Things

The concept of the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) has recently witnessed a growing interest from researchers and industries. Trust establishment between underwater nodes substantially impacts the security of such a network. However, existing trust mechanisms fall short of addressing the complexity of undersea networks while also meeting the scalability and heterogeneity requirements of IoUT. To contribute in this direction, this paper tackles the issue of trust management between underwater nodes by highlighting the gaps in the recent research to thoroughly investigate the trust process given the limitations of the underwater environment. The paper presents a conceptual Multi-level trust-based system for IoUT that handles the IoUT requirement in the design phase. The proposed framework satisfies IoUT requirements while preserving overall system performance. The initial evaluation shows that the framework facilitates trust establishment between underwater nodes without jeopardising the network lifetime