Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) enables communication in disruptive scenarios where issues such as sparse and intermittent connectivity, long and variable delays, high latency, high error rates, or no end-to-end connectivity exist. Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is a network of the future in which integration between devices, vehicles, and users will be unlimited and universal, overcoming the heterogeneity of systems, services, applications, and devices. Delay-tolerant internet of vehicles (DT-IoV) is emerging and becoming a popular research topic due to the critical applications that can be realized, such as software or map update dissemination. For an IoV to work efficiently, a degree of cooperation between nodes is necessary to deliver messages to their destinations. However, nodes might misbehave and silently drop messages, also known as a black-hole attack, degrading network performance. Various solutions have been proposed to deal with black-hole nodes, but most are centralized or require each node to meet every other node. This paper proposes a decentralized reputation scheme called BiRep that identifies and punishes black-hole nodes in DT-IoV. BiRep is tested on the Prophet routing protocol. Simulation results show excellent performance in all scenarios, comparable or better to other reputation schemes, significantly increasing the delivery ratio of messages.
Keywords: black-hole attack; delay-tolerant internet of vehicles; reputation.