Bluetooth based Proximity, Multi-hop Analysis and Bi-directional Trust: Epidemics and More
This addresses the need for secure and reliable trust mechanisms in mobile networks, particularly for public health applications during epidemics, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing wireless technologies.
The paper tackles the problem of establishing trust in Bluetooth-based mesh networks by proposing a protocol that computes trust scores based on proximity and bi-directional message transfer across multiple hops, with applications in epidemics like COVID-19 for improved contact-tracing, privacy, and data verification.
In this paper, we propose a trust layer on top of Bluetooth and similar wireless communication technologies that can form mesh networks. This layer as a protocol enables computing trust scores based on proximity and bi-directional transfer of messages in multiple hops across a network of mobile devices. We describe factors and an approach for determining these trust scores and highlight its applications during epidemics such as COVID-19 through improved contact-tracing, better privacy and verification for sensitive data sharing in the numerous Bluetooth and GPS based mobile applications that are being developed to track the spread.