A Dynamic Game-Theoretic Trust Tree Framework for Trust-Aware Routing Against Non-Cooperative Nodes in the Internet of Things

Routing in Internet of Things (IoT) networks becomes increasingly challenging when non-cooperative nodes participate in packet forwarding, as they reduce delivery reliability, increase communication delay, and consume network resources inefficiently. Existing trust-based and game-theoretic routing approaches generally rely on static trust evaluation or fixed hierarchical structures, limiting their ability to adapt to dynamic network conditions. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a dynamic game-theoretic trust-tree framework for trust-aware routing in IoT networks. The proposed framework constructs and continuously updates a hierarchical trust tree through a two-player bargaining game, where routing decisions are made using a trust-aware utility function that jointly considers packet forwarding reliability, residual energy, communication cost, and node trustworthiness. Unlike conventional hierarchical trust models, the proposed framework dynamically reorganizes the trust hierarchy according to node behavior, enabling adaptive parent selection and more reliable packet forwarding. The routing framework is mathematically formulated and evaluated using The ONE simulator under different network scenarios. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves the packet delivery ratio by approximately 13–16%, reduces the average end-to-end delay by nearly 18%, and decreases routing overhead by about 15% compared with representative trust-based routing approaches. These findings demonstrate that integrating dynamic trust-tree construction with game-theoretic decision-making provides an efficient, scalable, and reliable routing solution for IoT environments containing non-cooperative nodes.