Security, trust and cooperation in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are a promising technology for many real-world applications such as critical infrastructure monitoring, scientific data gathering, smart buildings, etc.. However, given the typically unattended and potentially unsecured operation environment, there has been an increased number of security threats to sensor networks. In addition, sensor networks have very constrained resources, such as limited energy, memory, computational power, and communication bandwidth. These unique challenges call for new security mechanisms and algorithms. In this dissertation, we propose novel algorithms and models to address some important and challenging security problems in wireless sensor networks. The first part of the dissertation focuses on data trust in sensor networks. Since sensor networks are mainly deployed to monitor events and report data, the quality of received data must be ensured in order to make meaningful inferences from sensor data. We first study a false data injection attack in the distributed state estimation problem and propose a distributed Bayesian detection algorithm, which could maintain correct estimation results when less than one half of the sensors are compromised. To deal with the situation where more than one half of the sensors may be compromised, we introduce a special class of sensor nodes called \textit{trusted cores}. We then design a secure distributed trust aggregation algorithm that can utilize the trusted cores to improve network robustness. We show that as long as there exist some paths that can connect each regular node to one of these trusted cores, the network can not be subverted by attackers. The second part of the dissertation focuses on sensor network monitoring and anomaly detection. A sensor network may suffer from system failures due to loss of links and nodes, or malicious intrusions. Therefore, it is critical to continuously monitor the overall state of the network and locate performance anomalies. The network monitoring and probe selection problem is formulated as a budgeted coverage problem and a Markov decision process. Efficient probing strategies are designed to achieve a flexible tradeoff between inference accuracy and probing overhead. Based on the probing results on traffic measurements, anomaly detection can be conducted. To capture the highly dynamic network traffic, we develop a detection scheme based on multi-scale analysis of the traffic using wavelet transforms and hidden Markov models. The performance of the probing strategy and of the detection scheme are extensively evaluated in malicious scenarios using the NS-2 network simulator. Lastly, to better understand the role of trust in sensor networks, a game theoretic model is formulated to mathematically analyze the relation between trust and cooperation. Given the trust relations, the interactions among nodes are modeled as a network game on a trust-weighted graph. We then propose an efficient heuristic method that explores network heterogeneity to improve Nash equilibrium efficiency

Energy-Efficient Multi-Level and Distance-Aware Clustering Mechanism for WSNs

[EN] Most sensor networks are deployed at hostile environments to sense and gather specific information. As sensor nodes have battery constraints, therefore, the research community is trying to propose energyefficient solutions for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to prolong the lifetime of the network. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient multi-level and distance-aware clustering (EEMDC) mechanism for WSNs. In this mechanism, the area of the network is divided into three logical layers, which depends upon the hop-count-based distance from the base station. The simulation outcomes show that EEMDC is more energy efficient than other existing conventional approaches.This work has been partially supported by the 'Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion', through the 'Plan Nacional de I+D+i 2008-2011' in the 'Subprograma de Proyectos de Investigacion Fundamental', project TEC2011-27516, and by the Polytechnic University of Valencia, through the PAID-15-11 multidisciplinary projectsMehmood, A.; Khan, S.; Shams, B.; Lloret, J. (2015). Energy-Efficient Multi-Level and Distance-Aware Clustering Mechanism for WSNs. International Journal of Communication Systems. 28(5):972-989. https://doi.org/10.1002/dac.2720S972989285Sendra, S., Lloret, J., Garcia, M., & Toledo, J. F. (2011). Power Saving and Energy Optimization Techniques for Wireless Sensor Neworks (Invited Paper). Journal of Communications, 6(6). doi:10.4304/jcm.6.6.439-459Bri D Garcia M Lloret J Dini P Real deployments of wireless sensor networks Third International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications (SENSORCOMM 2009) 2009 8 23GUI, L., VAL, T., & WEI, A. (2011). A Novel Two-Class Localization Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks. Network Protocols and Algorithms, 3(3). doi:10.5296/npa.v3i3.863Rajeswari, A., & P.T, K. (2011). A Novel Energy Efficient Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks Using Spatial Correlation Based Collaborative Medium Access Control Combined with Hybrid MAC. Network Protocols and Algorithms, 3(4). doi:10.5296/npa.v3i4.1296Lloret, J., Garcia, M., Tomás, J., & Boronat, F. (2008). GBP-WAHSN: A Group-Based Protocol for Large Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks. Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 23(3), 461-480. doi:10.1007/s11390-008-9147-6Lloret, J., Garcia, M., Bri, D., & Diaz, J. (2009). A Cluster-Based Architecture to Structure the Topology of Parallel Wireless Sensor Networks. Sensors, 9(12), 10513-10544. doi:10.3390/s91210513LEHSAINI, M., GUYENNET, H., & FEHAM, M. (2010). Cluster-based Energy-efficient k-Coverage for Wireless Sensor Networks. Network Protocols and Algorithms, 2(2). doi:10.5296/npa.v2i2.325Liu, G., Xu, B., & Chen, H. (2011). Decentralized estimation over noisy channels in cluster-based wireless sensor networks. International Journal of Communication Systems, 25(10), 1313-1329. doi:10.1002/dac.1308Cheng, L., Chen, C., Ma, J., & Shu, L. (2011). Contention-based geographic forwarding in asynchronous duty-cycled wireless sensor networks. International Journal of Communication Systems, 25(12), 1585-1602. doi:10.1002/dac.1325Wang, X., & Qian, H. (2011). Hierarchical and low-power IPv6 address configuration for wireless sensor networks. International Journal of Communication Systems, 25(12), 1513-1529. doi:10.1002/dac.1318Zhang, D., Yang, Z., Raychoudhury, V., Chen, Z., & Lloret, J. (2013). An Energy-Efficient Routing Protocol Using Movement Trends in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks. The Computer Journal, 56(8), 938-946. doi:10.1093/comjnl/bxt028Chen, J.-S., Hong, Z.-W., Wang, N.-C., & Jhuang, S.-H. (2010). Efficient Cluster Head Selection Methods for Wireless Sensor Networks. Journal of Networks, 5(8). doi:10.4304/jnw.5.8.964-970Peiravi, A., Mashhadi, H. R., & Hamed Javadi, S. (2011). An optimal energy-efficient clustering method in wireless sensor networks using multi-objective genetic algorithm. International Journal of Communication Systems, 26(1), 114-126. doi:10.1002/dac.1336Zeynali, M., Mollanejad, A., & Khanli, L. M. (2011). Novel hierarchical routing protocol in wireless sensor network. Procedia Computer Science, 3, 292-300. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2010.12.050Heinzelman W Chandrakasan A Balakrishnan H Energy-efficient communication protocol for wireless microsensor networks 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2000 3005 3014Wang, A., Yang, D., & Sun, D. (2012). A clustering algorithm based on energy information and cluster heads expectation for wireless sensor networks. Computers & Electrical Engineering, 38(3), 662-671. doi:10.1016/j.compeleceng.2011.11.017Gou H Yoo Y An energy balancing LEACH algorithm for wireless sensor networks Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations (ITNG) 2010Ding, P., Holliday, J., & Celik, A. (2005). Distributed Energy-Efficient Hierarchical Clustering for Wireless Sensor Networks. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 322-339. doi:10.1007/11502593_25Bandyopadhyay S Coyle E An energy-efficient hierarchical clustering algorithm for wireless sensor networks The 32nd IEEE International Conference on Computer Communication (INFOCOM 2003) 2003Jarry, A., Leone, P., Nikoletseas, S., & Rolim, J. (2011). Optimal data gathering paths and energy-balance mechanisms in wireless networks. Ad Hoc Networks, 9(6), 1036-1048. doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2010.11.003Zhu, Y., Wu, W., Pan, J., & Tang, Y. (2010). An energy-efficient data gathering algorithm to prolong lifetime of wireless sensor networks. Computer Communications, 33(5), 639-647. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2009.11.008Khamfroush H Saadat R Khademzadeh A Khamfroush K Lifetime increase for wireless sensor networks using cluster-based routing International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology-Spring Conference (IACSIT-SC 2009) 2009Li, H., Liu, Y., Chen, W., Jia, W., Li, B., & Xiong, J. (2013). COCA: Constructing optimal clustering architecture to maximize sensor network lifetime. Computer Communications, 36(3), 256-268. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2012.10.006Aslam N Phillips W Robertson W Sivakumar S A multi-criterion optimization technique for energy efficient cluster formation in wireless sensor networks 4th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, (CCNC 2007) 2007 650 654Yi, S., Heo, J., Cho, Y., & Hong, J. (2007). PEACH: Power-efficient and adaptive clustering hierarchy protocol for wireless sensor networks. Computer Communications, 30(14-15), 2842-2852. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2007.05.034Yong, Z., & Pei, Q. (2012). A Energy-Efficient Clustering Routing Algorithm Based on Distance and Residual Energy for Wireless Sensor Networks. Procedia Engineering, 29, 1882-1888. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2012.01.231Chuan-Chi W A minimum transmission energy consumption routing protocol for user-centric wireless networks 2011 1143 1148Kumar, D., Aseri, T. C., & Patel, R. B. (2009). EEHC: Energy efficient heterogeneous clustered scheme for wireless sensor networks. Computer Communications, 32(4), 662-667. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2008.11.025Kim KT Moon SS Tree-Based Clustering (TBC) for energy efficient wireless sensor networks IEEE 24th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (WAINA) 2010 680 685Yu, J., Qi, Y., Wang, G., & Gu, X. (2012). A cluster-based routing protocol for wireless sensor networks with nonuniform node distribution. AEU - International Journal of Electronics and Communications, 66(1), 54-61. doi:10.1016/j.aeue.2011.05.002Ye M Li C Wu J EECS: an Energy Efficient Clustering Scheme in wireless sensor networks 24th IEEE International Performance on Computing, and Communications Conference 2005 535 540Gautama N Lee W Pyun J Dynamic clustering and distance aware routing protocol for wireless sensor networks PE-WASUN'09 2009Heinzelman, W. B., Chandrakasan, A. P., & Balakrishnan, H. (2002). An application-specific protocol architecture for wireless microsensor networks. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 1(4), 660-670. doi:10.1109/twc.2002.804190Lai, W. K., Fan, C. S., & Lin, L. Y. (2012). Arranging cluster sizes and transmission ranges for wireless sensor networks. Information Sciences, 183(1), 117-131. doi:10.1016/j.ins.2011.08.029Pantazis, N. A., Vergados, D. J., Vergados, D. D., & Douligeris, C. (2009). Energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks using sleep mode TDMA scheduling. Ad Hoc Networks, 7(2), 322-343. doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2008.03.006OMNeT++ Community Documentation and Tutorials of omnet++ http://www.omnetpp.org/Castallia Documentation and Tutorials of Castalia Simulator for WSN and BAN http://castalia.research.nicta.com.au/index.php/en/Research Group on Computer Networks and Multimedia Communication UFPA - Brazil Download-Leach-v2-for-Castalia http://www.gercom.ufpa.br/index.php?option=com_filecabinet&view=files&id=1&Itemid=31&lang=p

Energy efficient distributed receiver based cooperative medium access control protocol for wireless sensor networks.

M.Sc.Eng. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2013.Wireless sensor networks are battery operated computing and sensing devices that collaborate to achieve a common goal for a specific application. They are formed by a cluster of sensor nodes where each sensor node is composed of a single chip with embedded memory (microprocessor), a transceiver for transmission and reception (resulting in the most energy consumption), a sensor device for event detection and a power source to keep the node alive. Due to the environmental nature of their application, it is not feasible to change or charge the power source once a sensor node is deployed. The main design objective in WSNs (Wireless Sensor Networks) is to define effective and efficient strategies to conserve energy for the nodes in the network. With regard to the transceiver, the highest consumer of energy in a sensor node, the factors contributing to energy consumption in wireless sensor networks include idle listening, where nodes keep listening on the channel with no data to receive; ovehearing, where nodes hears or intercept data that is meant for a different node; and collision, which occurs at the sink node when it receives data from different nodes at the same time. These factors all arise during transmission or reception of data in the Transceiver module in wireless sensor networks. A MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol is one of the techniques that enables successful operation while minimizing the energy consumption in the network. Its task is to avoid collision, reduce overhearing and to reduce idle listening by properly managing the state of each node in the network. The aim, when designing a MAC protocol for WSNs is to achieve a balance amongst minimum energy consumption, minimum latency, maximum fault-tolerance and providing QoS (Quality of Service). To carefully achieve this balance, this dissertation has proposed, designed, simulated and analyzed a new cooperative MAC scheme with an overhearing avoidance technique with the aim of minimizing energy consumption by attempting to minimize the overhearing in the WSN. The new MAC protocol for WSNs supports the cooperative diversity and overhearing communications in order to reduce the effects of energy consumption thus increase the network lifetime, providing improved communication reliability and further mitigating the effects of multipath fading in WSNs. The MAC scheme in this work focuses on cooperation with overhearing avoidance and reducing transmissions in case of link failures in order to minimize energy consumption. The cooperative MAC scheme presented herein uses the standard IEEE 802.15.4 scheme as its base physical model. It introduces cooperation, overhearing avoidance, receiver based relay node selection and a Markov-based channel state estimation. The performance analysis of the developed Energy Efficient Distributed Receiver based MAC (E2DRCMAC) protocol for WSNs shows an improvement from the standard IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer with regard to the energy consumption, throughput, reliability of message delivery, bit error rates, system capacity, packet delay, packet error rates, and packet delivery ratios

EERP: Intelligent Cluster based Energy Enhanced Routing Protocol Design over Wireless Sensor Network Environment

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)) and the associated technologies are growing day-by-day in a drastic level. The Wireless Sensor Network medium has a distributed communication logic, in which it is interconnected with set of wireless sensor nodes and a unique basestation. A basestation stays in a constant place to provide a support to the transceivers for achieving a successful communication between source and destination entities. This kind of wireless communication mediums highly depends on the basestation to acquire the transaction needs as well as the basestation acts as a gateway between transmitter and receiver units. The cluster based wireless communication models are introduced to provide a flaw free communication between entities on WSN region with handling of wireless sensor nodes in the form of cluster. In literature several cluster enabled wireless communication models are designed, but all are strucked up with improper node placements and associated energy level mismatching. These issues raise cost efficient problems in Wireless Sensor Network environment. SO, that a new energy efficient routing protocol with an effective communication strategy is required to solve such issues in past. This paper introduced a new routing protocol with high efficient data transmission norms, in which it is called as Energy Enhanced Routing Protocol (eeRP). The proposed approach of eeRP associates the powerful clustering logic in this scheme to provide a fault free communication model to the WSN environment. By using this approach the standardized routing model is constructed with respect to the sensor nodes and basestation. The most important part of cluster based wireless communication model is the handling of Cluster-Head (CH), in which it needs to be elected based on certain communication principles such as the estimation of distance, position of other nodes in the cluster region, basestation positioning and the node capability. These constraints are essential to analyze the Cluster-Head to improve the pathway estimation process. The proposed approach of eeRP utilizes the powerful CH election algorithm called Firefly to provide an intellectual cluster head election process. The performance level of the proposed approach eeRP is estimated based on the efficiency of throughput, path selection efficiency, reduced energy consumption ratio and the network lifetime improvement. The experimental results assure these metrics in resulting section with graphical proofs

Energy-efficient data acquisition for accurate signal estimation in wireless sensor networks

Long-term monitoring of an environment is a fundamental requirement for most wireless sensor networks. Owing to the fact that the sensor nodes have limited energy budget, prolonging their lifetime is essential in order to permit long-term monitoring. Furthermore, many applications require sensor nodes to obtain an accurate estimation of a point-source signal (for example, an animal call or seismic activity). Commonly, multiple sensor nodes simultaneously sample and then cooperate to estimate the event signal. The selection of cooperation nodes is important to reduce the estimation error while conserving the network’s energy. In this paper, we present a novel method for sensor data acquisition and signal estimation, which considers estimation accuracy, energy conservation, and energy balance. The method, using a concept of ‘virtual clusters,’ forms groups of sensor nodes with the same spatial and temporal properties. Two algorithms are used to provide functionality. The ‘distributed formation’ algorithm automatically forms and classifies the virtual clusters. The ‘round robin sample scheme’ schedules the virtual clusters to sample the event signals in turn. The estimation error and the energy consumption of the method, when used with a generalized sensing model, are evaluated through analysis and simulation. The results show that this method can achieve an improved signal estimation while reducing and balancing energy consumption

Secure and Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

This chapter discusses the need of security and privacy protection mechanisms in aggregation protocols used in wireless sensor networks (WSN). It presents a comprehensive state of the art discussion on the various privacy protection mechanisms used in WSNs and particularly focuses on the CPDA protocols proposed by He et al. (INFOCOM 2007). It identifies a security vulnerability in the CPDA protocol and proposes a mechanism to plug that vulnerability. To demonstrate the need of security in aggregation process, the chapter further presents various threats in WSN aggregation mechanisms. A large number of existing protocols for secure aggregation in WSN are discussed briefly and a protocol is proposed for secure aggregation which can detect false data injected by malicious nodes in a WSN. The performance of the protocol is also presented. The chapter concludes while highlighting some future directions of research in secure data aggregation in WSNs.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, 3 table

Distributed RSS-Based Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Second-Order Cone Programming

In this paper, we propose a new approach based on convex optimization to address the received signal strength (RSS)-based cooperative localization problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). By using iterative procedures and measurements between two adjacent nodes in the network exclusively, each target node determines its own position locally. The localization problem is formulated using the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion, since ML-based solutions have the property of being asymptotically efficient. To overcome the non-convexity of the ML optimization problem, we employ the appropriate convex relaxation technique leading to second-order cone programming (SOCP). Additionally, a simple heuristic approach for improving the convergence of the proposed scheme for the case when the transmit power is known is introduced. Furthermore, we provide details about the computational complexity and energy consumption of the considered approaches. Our simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms the existing ones in terms of the estimation accuracy for more than 1.5 m. Moreover, the new approach requires a lower number of iterations to converge, and consequently, it is likely to preserve energy in all presented scenarios, in comparison to the state-of-the-art approaches

A Trust Based Congestion Aware Hybrid Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Energy Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks (TC-ACO)

Congestion is a problem of paramount importance in resource constrained Wireless Sensor Networks, especially for large networks, where the traffic loads exceed the available capacity of the resources. Sensor nodes are prone to failure and the misbehavior of these faulty nodes creates further congestion. The resulting effect is a degradation in network performance, additional computation and increased energy consumption, which in turn decreases network lifetime. Hence, the data packet routing algorithm should consider congestion as one of the parameters, in addition to the role of the faulty nodes and not merely energy efficient protocols. Unfortunately most of the researchers have tried to make the routing schemes energy efficient without considering congestion factor and the effect of the faulty nodes. In this paper we have proposed a congestion aware, energy efficient, routing approach that utilizes Ant Colony Optimization algorithm, in which faulty nodes are isolated by means of the concept of trust. The merits of the proposed scheme are verified through simulations where they are compared with other protocols.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures and 2 tables (Conference Paper