Entropy-based Fuzzy AHP Model for Trustworthy Service Provider Selection in Internet of Things

Nowadays, trust and reputation models are used to build a wide range of trust-based security mechanisms and trust-based service management applications on the Internet of Things (IoT). Considering trust as a single unit can result in missing important and significant factors. We split trust into its building-blocks, then we sort and assign weight to these building-blocks (trust metrics) on the basis of its priorities for the transaction context of a particular goal. To perform these processes, we consider trust as a multi-criteria decision-making problem, where a set of trust worthiness metrics represent the decision criteria. We introduce Entropy-based fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (EFAHP) as a trust model for selecting a trustworthy service provider, since the sense of decision making regarding multi-metrics trust is structural. EFAHP gives 1) fuzziness, which fits the vagueness, uncertainty, and subjectivity of trust attributes; 2) AHP, which is a systematic way for making decisions in complex multi-criteria decision making; and 3) entropy concept, which is utilized to calculate the aggregate weights for each service provider. We present a numerical illustration in trust-based Service Oriented Architecture in the IoT (SOA-IoT) to demonstrate the service provider selection using the EFAHP Model in assessing and aggregating the trust scores.