Outlier detection techniques for wireless sensor networks: A survey

In the field of wireless sensor networks, those measurements that significantly deviate from the normal pattern of sensed data are considered as outliers. The potential sources of outliers include noise and errors, events, and malicious attacks on the network. Traditional outlier detection techniques are not directly applicable to wireless sensor networks due to the nature of sensor data and specific requirements and limitations of the wireless sensor networks. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of existing outlier detection techniques specifically developed for the wireless sensor networks. Additionally, it presents a technique-based taxonomy and a comparative table to be used as a guideline to select a technique suitable for the application at hand based on characteristics such as data type, outlier type, outlier identity, and outlier degree

Outlier Detection Techniques For Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

In the field of wireless sensor networks, measurements that significantly deviate from the normal pattern of sensed data are considered as outliers. The potential sources of outliers include noise and errors, events, and malicious attacks on the network. Traditional outlier detection techniques are not directly applicable to wireless sensor networks due to the multivariate nature of sensor data and specific requirements and limitations of the wireless sensor networks. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of existing outlier detection techniques specifically developed for the wireless sensor networks. Additionally, it presents a technique-based taxonomy and a decision tree to be used as a guideline to select a technique suitable for the application at hand based on characteristics such as data type, outlier type, outlier degree

An Online Outlier Detection Technique for Wireless Sensor Networks using Unsupervised Quarter-Sphere Support Vector Machine

The main challenge faced by outlier detection techniques designed for wireless sensor networks is achieving high detection rate and low false alarm rate while maintaining the resource consumption in the network to a minimum. In this paper, we propose an online outlier detection technique with low computational complexity and memory usage based on an unsupervised centered quarter-sphere support vector machine for real-time environmental monitoring applications of wireless sensor networks. The proposed approach is completely local and thus saves communication overhead and scales well with increase of nodes deployed. We take advantage of spatial correlations that exist in sensor data of adjacent nodes to reduce the false alarm rate in real-time. Experiments with both synthetic and real data collected from the Intel Berkeley Research Laboratory show that our technique achieves better mining performance in terms of parameter selection using different kernel functions compared to an earlier offline outlier detection technique designed for wireless sensor networks

In-Network Outlier Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

To address the problem of unsupervised outlier detection in wireless sensor networks, we develop an approach that (1) is flexible with respect to the outlier definition, (2) computes the result in-network to reduce both bandwidth and energy usage,(3) only uses single hop communication thus permitting very simple node failure detection and message reliability assurance mechanisms (e.g., carrier-sense), and (4) seamlessly accommodates dynamic updates to data. We examine performance using simulation with real sensor data streams. Our results demonstrate that our approach is accurate and imposes a reasonable communication load and level of power consumption.Comment: Extended version of a paper appearing in the Int'l Conference on Distributed Computing Systems 200

Machine Learning in Wireless Sensor Networks: Algorithms, Strategies, and Applications

Wireless sensor networks monitor dynamic environments that change rapidly over time. This dynamic behavior is either caused by external factors or initiated by the system designers themselves. To adapt to such conditions, sensor networks often adopt machine learning techniques to eliminate the need for unnecessary redesign. Machine learning also inspires many practical solutions that maximize resource utilization and prolong the lifespan of the network. In this paper, we present an extensive literature review over the period 2002-2013 of machine learning methods that were used to address common issues in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The advantages and disadvantages of each proposed algorithm are evaluated against the corresponding problem. We also provide a comparative guide to aid WSN designers in developing suitable machine learning solutions for their specific application challenges.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Outlier Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Distributed Principal Component Analysis

Detecting anomalies is an important challenge for intrusion detection and fault diagnosis in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). To address the problem of outlier detection in wireless sensor networks, in this paper we present a PCA-based centralized approach and a DPCA-based distributed energy-efficient approach for detecting outliers in sensed data in a WSN. The outliers in sensed data can be caused due to compromised or malfunctioning nodes. In the distributed approach, we use distributed principal component analysis (DPCA) and fixed-width clustering (FWC) in order to establish a global normal pattern and to detect outlier. The process of establishing the global normal pattern is distributed among all sensor nodes. We also use weighted coefficients and a forgetting curve to periodically update the established normal profile. We demonstrate that the proposed distributed approach achieves comparable accuracy compared to the centralized approach, while the communication overhead in the network and energy consumption is significantly reduced