Assessment of the Causes and Effects of Packet Loss in Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous devices using sensors to monitor physical or environmental conditions. A WSN system incorporates a gateway that provides wireless connectivity back to the wired world and distributed nodes.[i] Like any other wireless network, loss of packets is a common occurrence in WSNs. This may be caused by a variety of events and occurrences on the network which may in the long run affect the performance of the network. This paper therefore studied the connection between the causes of packet loss in wireless sensor networks and their net effect on the outcome and performance of the said WSN in the monitoring of physical and environmental conditions.Primarily the paper relied on secondary data and review of past literature and research and in the process was able to observe that weak signals and malicious attacks such as the black hole attack, selective forwarding attack and radio interferences are the major causes of packet loss whose effects include reduced network life and throughput; higher consumption of energy; denial of service attacks; reduced network efficiency; packet degradation and inconsistent packets. Keywords: Packet loss, Wireless sensor networks, malicious attacks, Received Signal strength [i] Anna Hac, (2003)Wireless Sensor Network Designs,John Wiley and Son

An Outline of Security in Wireless Sensor Networks: Threats, Countermeasures and Implementations

With the expansion of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the need for securing the data flow through these networks is increasing. These sensor networks allow for easy-to-apply and flexible installations which have enabled them to be used for numerous applications. Due to these properties, they face distinct information security threats. Security of the data flowing through across networks provides the researchers with an interesting and intriguing potential for research. Design of these networks to ensure the protection of data faces the constraints of limited power and processing resources. We provide the basics of wireless sensor network security to help the researchers and engineers in better understanding of this applications field. In this chapter, we will provide the basics of information security with special emphasis on WSNs. The chapter will also give an overview of the information security requirements in these networks. Threats to the security of data in WSNs and some of their counter measures are also presented

A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield. Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios. Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Attacks on Geographic Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Network

With the increase in the military and several other applications of Wireless Sensor Network, provisions must be made for secure transmission of sensitive information throughout the network. Most of the routing protocols proposed for ad-hoc networks and sensor networks are not designed with security as a goal. Hence, many routing protocols are vulnerable to an attack by an adversary who can disrupt the network or harness valuable information from the network. Routing Protocols for wireless sensor networks are classified into three types depending on their network structure as Flat routing protocols, Hierarchical routing protocol and Geographic routing protocols. Large number of nodes in a wireless sensor network , limited battery power and their data centric nature make routing in wireless sensor network a challenging problem. We mainly concentrate on location-based or geographic routing protocol like Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing Protocol. Sybil attack and Selective forwarding attack are the two attacks feasible in GPSR. These attacks are implemented in GPSR and their losses caused to the network are analysed

Analysis of Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) protocol

Sensor network consists of tiny sensors and actuators with general purpose computing elements to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, pressure, etc. Wireless Sensor Networks are uniquely characterized by properties like limited power they can harvest or store, dynamic network topology, large scale of deployment. Sensor networks have a huge application in fields which includes habitat monitoring, object tracking, fire detection, land slide detection and traffic monitoring. Based on the network topology, routing protocols in sensor networks can be classified as flat-based routing, hierarchical-based routing and location-based routing. These protocols are quite simple and hence are very susceptible to attacks like Sinkhole attack, Selective forwarding, Sybil attack, Wormholes, HELLO flood attack, Acknowledgement spoofing or altering, replaying routing information. Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) is an energy-efficient hierarchical-based routing protocol. Our prime focus was on the analysis of LEACH based upon certain parameters like network lifetime, stability period, etc. and also the effect of selective forwarding attack and degree of heterogeneity on LEACH protocol. After a number of simulations, it was found that the stability region’s length is considerably increased by choosing an optimal value of heterogeneity; energy is not properly utilized and throughput is decreased in networks compromised by selective forwarding attack but the number of cluster-heads per round remains unaffected in such networks