Resilient networking in wireless sensor networks

This report deals with security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), especially in network layer. Multiple secure routing protocols have been proposed in the literature. However, they often use the cryptography to secure routing functionalities. The cryptography alone is not enough to defend against multiple attacks due to the node compromise. Therefore, we need more algorithmic solutions. In this report, we focus on the behavior of routing protocols to determine which properties make them more resilient to attacks. Our aim is to find some answers to the following questions. Are there any existing protocols, not designed initially for security, but which already contain some inherently resilient properties against attacks under which some portion of the network nodes is compromised? If yes, which specific behaviors are making these protocols more resilient? We propose in this report an overview of security strategies for WSNs in general, including existing attacks and defensive measures. In this report we focus at the network layer in particular, and an analysis of the behavior of four particular routing protocols is provided to determine their inherent resiliency to insider attacks. The protocols considered are: Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Gradient-Based Routing (GBR), Greedy Forwarding (GF) and Random Walk Routing (RWR)

Impact of network structure on the capacity of wireless multihop ad hoc communication

As a representative of a complex technological system, so-called wireless multihop ad hoc communication networks are discussed. They represent an infrastructure-less generalization of todays wireless cellular phone networks. Lacking a central control authority, the ad hoc nodes have to coordinate themselves such that the overall network performs in an optimal way. A performance indicator is the end-to-end throughput capacity. Various models, generating differing ad hoc network structure via differing transmission power assignments, are constructed and characterized. They serve as input for a generic data traffic simulation as well as some semi-analytic estimations. The latter reveal that due to the most-critical-node effect the end-to-end throughput capacity sensitively depends on the underlying network structure, resulting in differing scaling laws with respect to network size.Comment: 30 pages, to be published in Physica

Scaling of critical connectivity of mobile ad hoc communication networks

In this paper, critical global connectivity of mobile ad hoc communication networks (MAHCN) is investigated. We model the two-dimensional plane on which nodes move randomly with a triangular lattice. Demanding the best communication of the network, we account the global connectivity $\eta$ as a function of occupancy $\sigma$ of sites in the lattice by mobile nodes. Critical phenomena of the connectivity for different transmission ranges $r$ are revealed by numerical simulations, and these results fit well to the analysis based on the assumption of homogeneous mixing . Scaling behavior of the connectivity is found as $\eta \sim f(R^{\beta}\sigma)$, where $R=(r-r_{0})/r_{0}$, $r_{0}$ is the length unit of the triangular lattice and $\beta$ is the scaling index in the universal function $f(x)$. The model serves as a sort of site percolation on dynamic complex networks relative to geometric distance. Moreover, near each critical $\sigma_c(r)$ corresponding to certain transmission range $r$, there exists a cut-off degree $k_c$ below which the clustering coefficient of such self-organized networks keeps a constant while the averaged nearest neighbor degree exhibits a unique linear variation with the degree k, which may be useful to the designation of real MAHCN.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure