An Energy Aware and Secure MAC Protocol for Tackling Denial of Sleep Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks which form part of the core for the Internet of Things consist of resource constrained sensors that are usually powered by batteries. Therefore, careful energy awareness is essential when working with these devices. Indeed,the introduction of security techniques such as authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality and integrity of data, can place higher energy load on the sensors. However, the absence of security protection c ould give room for energy drain attacks such as denial of sleep attacks which have a higher negative impact on the life span ( of the sensors than the presence of security features. This thesis, therefore, focuses on tackling denial of sleep attacks from two perspectives A security perspective and an energy efficiency perspective. The security perspective involves evaluating and ranking a number of security based techniques to curbing denial of sleep attacks. The energy efficiency perspective, on the other hand, involves exploring duty cycling and simulating three Media Access Control ( protocols Sensor MAC, Timeout MAC andTunableMAC under different network sizes and measuring different parameters such as the Received Signal Strength RSSI) and Link Quality Indicator ( Transmit power, throughput and energy efficiency Duty cycling happens to be one of the major techniques for conserving energy in wireless sensor networks and this research aims to answer questions with regards to the effect of duty cycles on the energy efficiency as well as the throughput of three duty cycle protocols Sensor MAC ( Timeout MAC ( and TunableMAC in addition to creating a novel MAC protocol that is also more resilient to denial of sleep a ttacks than existing protocols. The main contributions to knowledge from this thesis are the developed framework used for evaluation of existing denial of sleep attack solutions and the algorithms which fuel the other contribution to knowledge a newly developed protocol tested on the Castalia Simulator on the OMNET++ platform. The new protocol has been compared with existing protocols and has been found to have significant improvement in energy efficiency and also better resilience to denial of sleep at tacks Part of this research has been published Two conference publications in IEEE Explore and one workshop paper

A Survey and Future Directions on Clustering: From WSNs to IoT and Modern Networking Paradigms

Many Internet of Things (IoT) networks are created as an overlay over traditional ad-hoc networks such as Zigbee. Moreover, IoT networks can resemble ad-hoc networks over networks that support device-to-device (D2D) communication, e.g., D2D-enabled cellular networks and WiFi-Direct. In these ad-hoc types of IoT networks, efficient topology management is a crucial requirement, and in particular in massive scale deployments. Traditionally, clustering has been recognized as a common approach for topology management in ad-hoc networks, e.g., in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Topology management in WSNs and ad-hoc IoT networks has many design commonalities as both need to transfer data to the destination hop by hop. Thus, WSN clustering techniques can presumably be applied for topology management in ad-hoc IoT networks. This requires a comprehensive study on WSN clustering techniques and investigating their applicability to ad-hoc IoT networks. In this article, we conduct a survey of this field based on the objectives for clustering, such as reducing energy consumption and load balancing, as well as the network properties relevant for efficient clustering in IoT, such as network heterogeneity and mobility. Beyond that, we investigate the advantages and challenges of clustering when IoT is integrated with modern computing and communication technologies such as Blockchain, Fog/Edge computing, and 5G. This survey provides useful insights into research on IoT clustering, allows broader understanding of its design challenges for IoT networks, and sheds light on its future applications in modern technologies integrated with IoT.acceptedVersio

A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

TDMA-based MAC Protocols for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks: A Survey, Qualitative Analysis and Open Research Issues

International audience—Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) have attracted a lot of attention in the research community in recent years due to their promising applications. VANETs help improve traffic safety and efficiency. Each vehicle can exchange information to inform other vehicles about the current status of the traffic flow or a dangerous situation such as an accident. Road safety and traffic management applications require a reliable communication scheme with minimal transmission collisions, which thus increase the need for an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. However, the design of the MAC in a vehicular network is a challenging task due to the high speed of the nodes, the frequent changes in topology, the lack of an infrastructure, and various QoS requirements. Recently several Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)-based medium access control protocols have been proposed for VANETs in an attempt to ensure that all the vehicles have enough time to send safety messages without collisions and to reduce the end-to-end delay and the packet loss ratio. In this paper, we identify the reasons for using the collision-free medium access control paradigm in VANETs. We then present a novel topology-based classification and we provide an overview of TDMA-based MAC protocols that have been proposed for VANETs. We focus on the characteristics of these protocols, as well as on their benefits and limitations. Finally, we give a qualitative comparison, and we discuss some open issues that need to be tackled in future studies in order to improve the performance of TDMA-based MAC protocols for vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications

Mobility-aware fog computing in dynamic networks with mobile nodes: A survey

Fog computing is an evolving paradigm that addresses the latency-oriented performance and spatio-temporal issues of the cloud services by providing an extension to the cloud computing and storage services in the vicinity of the service requester. In dynamic networks, where both the mobile fog nodes and the end users exhibit time-varying characteristics, including dynamic network topology changes, there is a need of mobility-aware fog computing, which is very challenging due to various dynamisms, and yet systematically uncovered. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on the fog computing compliant with the OpenFog (IEEE 1934) standardised concept, where the mobility of fog nodes constitutes an integral part. A review of the state-of-the-art research in fog computing implemented with mobile nodes is conducted. The review includes the identification of several models of fog computing concept established on the principles of opportunistic networking, social communities, temporal networks, and vehicular ad-hoc networks. Relevant to these models, the contributing research studies are critically examined to provide an insight into the open issues and future research directions in mobile fog computing research

Analysis and Design of Protocols for Clustering in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Communication in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) without having any fixed infrastructure has drawn much attention for research. The infrastructure based cellular architecture sets up base stations to support the node mobility. Thus, mapping the concepts of base stations into MANET could meet its challenges like limited battery power, scalability, available band width etc..This leads to the design of logical clusters, where the cluster heads in every cluster play the role of base station. The cluster heads also form the virtual back bone for routing the packets in the network. In this thesis, simulation based survey has been made to study the strengths and weaknesses of existing algorithms that motivated for the design of energy efficient clustering in MANET. Neighbour Detection Protocol (NDP) has been designed to help the nodes to probe their immediate neighbours. In this protocol, every node broadcasts its own information to the network, so that it is received by a node that lies within its transmission range. The receiver senses its neighbours and updates its neighbour table from time to time. This protocol is validated through simulation by using Colour Petri Nets (CPN) prior to its implementation. Topology Adaptive Clustering Algorithm (TACA) has been proposed, that uses the node mobility and its available battery power for calculating the node weights. A node having the highest weight among its immediate neighbours declares itself as the volunteeer cluster head. As the current head consumes its battery power beyond a threshold, non-volunteer cluster heads are selected locally. The algorithm aims to utilise the battery power in a fairly distributed manner so that the total network life time is enhanced with reduced cluster maintenance overhead. During the process of clustering, some isolated heads without having any members are formed. This increases the delay in communication as the number of hops in the routing back bone is increased. A ransmissiion Range Adjustment Protocol (TRAP) has been proposed, that allows the isolated nodes to adjust their ranges to remain connected with existing cluster heads. The results show that, TRAP reduces the delay in communication by reducing the number of cluster heads in the network. Validation for the base protocol NDP and algorithm TACA are made through simulation by using the CPN tools. Each of the proposed work is evaluated separately to analyse their performances and compared with the competent results

Emerging Communications for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are deployed in a rapidly increasing number of arenas, with uses ranging from healthcare monitoring to industrial and environmental safety, as well as new ubiquitous computing devices that are becoming ever more pervasive in our interconnected society. This book presents a range of exciting developments in software communication technologies including some novel applications, such as in high altitude systems, ground heat exchangers and body sensor networks. Authors from leading institutions on four continents present their latest findings in the spirit of exchanging information and stimulating discussion in the WSN community worldwide