## 1 Introduction  
The Internet of Things (IoT) [1] is a new paradigm that involves connecting hand-held gadgets and everyday devices with sensing, computing, and communication functionality to create a network. Object recognition and monitoring, sensing information visualization, security control [2, 3], object networking, and other fields of IoT research are all included [4]. With the introduction of IoT, existing networks have become more important for data transfer in IoT applications. On the other hand, several IoT applications are affected by issues such as insecure wireless, a poorly constructed trust model, and poor mobile networks. Lack of connectivity, diverse mobility, and prolonged connection disruptions are common characteristics of IoT systems in urban environments. Such unorganized networks are a subset of delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs) [5; 6; 7]. End-to-end communication between sender and receiver nodes is rare in DTN. If the source node wants to send messages to the destination node, messages should always be transferred to intermediate participating nodes using the \"store-carry-forward\" method due to the interruption of communication. Furthermore, the time available for intermediate participating nodes to send messages is minimal. That is why the conventional routing protocols are ineffective in the \"store-carry-forward\" framework. As a result, developing effective DTN routing protocols in several IoT applications presents a serious challenge. One of the most popular forms of DTN is Vehicular Delay Tolerant Networks (VDTNs). VDTNs [8] are a new type of vehicular network whose architecture enables connectivity in situations in which an end-to-end route between the sender and receiver is not possible. VDTNs, like so many other ad hoc networks, depend on the cooperation and coordination among mobile network nodes that are used to receive, keep, carry, and forward packets [9; 10]. There are three types of nodes in VDTNs, namely, terminal, relay, and mobile nodes. Terminal nodes are generally located only at the network's boundary, which is in charge of massive data processing and connectivity with all other networks, e.g., the internet. The nodes that are located at road intersections are known as relay nodes. These nodes expand the number of network interactions and provide a larger amount of data packets that could be obtained by mobile vehicles in the range. The mobile nodes take routes and can communicate with the other types of nodes. Unlike other vehicular networks, VDTNs use two stages to address each communication opportunity: the control plane and the data plane (providing out-of-band signaling). In the initial phase of a communication opening by using the control plane, the nodes interchange preliminary information, such as buffer status, mobility speed, and destination node to establish and maintain services for proper data package delivery at the data plane. Messages are combined in the data plane and routed to either a single or several receivers. This out-of-band signaling technique permits various network technologies to be used in each plane and significantly increases network efficiency because nodes can decline a communication opportunity depending on the signaling information, and in general, that would keep resources or avoid data from being tampered with. Despite all of the progress made, VDTNs are still coping with the existence of misbehaving nodes that do not adopt the specifications and harm the overall network results. Typically, this type of node takes advantage of and utilizes the services of several other nodes to serve their interests. The selfish node, for instance, is the one that drops packages without sending them at least once [11; 12]. This type of node often wastes a lot of network resources and, therefore, can impact the efficiency of well-behaved nodes. This situation necessitates detecting certain nodes as well as taking measures toward them.