Gafor : Genetic algorithm based fuzzy optimized re-clustering in wireless sensor networks

Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding this work through Vice Deanship of Scientific Research Chairs: Chair of Pervasive and Mobile Computing. Funding: This research was funded by King Saud University in 2020.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Smart Wireless Sensor Networks

The recent development of communication and sensor technology results in the growth of a new attractive and challenging area - wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A wireless sensor network which consists of a large number of sensor nodes is deployed in environmental fields to serve various applications. Facilitated with the ability of wireless communication and intelligent computation, these nodes become smart sensors which do not only perceive ambient physical parameters but also be able to process information, cooperate with each other and self-organize into the network. These new features assist the sensor nodes as well as the network to operate more efficiently in terms of both data acquisition and energy consumption. Special purposes of the applications require design and operation of WSNs different from conventional networks such as the internet. The network design must take into account of the objectives of specific applications. The nature of deployed environment must be considered. The limited of sensor nodes� resources such as memory, computational ability, communication bandwidth and energy source are the challenges in network design. A smart wireless sensor network must be able to deal with these constraints as well as to guarantee the connectivity, coverage, reliability and security of network's operation for a maximized lifetime. This book discusses various aspects of designing such smart wireless sensor networks. Main topics includes: design methodologies, network protocols and algorithms, quality of service management, coverage optimization, time synchronization and security techniques for sensor networks

Secure location-aware communications in energy-constrained wireless networks

Wireless ad hoc network has enabled a variety of exciting civilian, industrial and military applications over the past few years. Among the many types of wireless ad hoc networks, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has gained popularity because of the technology development for manufacturing low-cost, low-power, multi-functional motes. Compared with traditional wireless network, location-aware communication is a very common communication pattern and is required by many applications in WSNs. For instance, in the geographical routing protocol, a sensor needs to know its own and its neighbors\u27 locations to forward a packet properly to the next hop. The application-aware communications are vulnerable to many malicious attacks, ranging from passive eavesdropping to active spoofing, jamming, replaying, etc. Although research efforts have been devoted to secure communications in general, the properties of energy-constrained networks pose new technical challenges: First, the communicating nodes in the network are always unattended for long periods without physical maintenance, which makes their energy a premier resource. Second, the wireless devices usually have very limited hardware resources such as memory, computation capacity and communication range. Third, the number of nodes can be potentially of very high magnitude. Therefore, it is infeasible to utilize existing secure algorithms designed for conventional wireless networks, and innovative mechanisms should be designed in a way that can conserve power consumption, use inexpensive hardware and lightweight protocols, and accommodate with the scalability of the network. In this research, we aim at constructing a secure location-aware communication system for energy-constrained wireless network, and we take wireless sensor network as a concrete research scenario. Particularly, we identify three important problems as our research targets: (1) providing correct location estimations for sensors in presence of wormhole attacks and pollution attacks, (2) detecting location anomalies according to the application-specific requirements of the verification accuracy, and (3) preventing information leakage to eavesdroppers when using network coding for multicasting location information. Our contributions of the research are as follows: First, we propose two schemes to improve the availability and accuracy of location information of nodes. Then, we study monitoring and detection techniques and propose three lightweight schemes to detect location anomalies. Finally, we propose two network coding schemes which can effectively prevent information leakage to eavesdroppers. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our schemes in enhancing security of the system. Compared to previous works, our schemes are more lightweight in terms of hardware cost, computation overhead and communication consumptions, and thus are suitable for energy-constrained wireless networks

Formal modelling and analysis of denial of services attacks in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted considerable research attention in recent years because of the perceived potential benefits offered by self-organising, multi-hop networks consisting of low-cost and small wireless devices for monitoring or control applications in di±cult environments. WSN may be deployed in hostile or inaccessible environments and are often unattended. These conditions present many challenges in ensuring that WSNs work effectively and survive long enough to fulfil their functionalities. Securing a WSN against any malicious attack is a particular challenge. Due to the limited resources of nodes, traditional routing protocols are not appropriate in WSNs and innovative methods are used to route data from source nodes to sink nodes (base stations). To evaluate the routing protocols against DoS attacks, an innovative design method of combining formal modelling and computer simulations has been proposed. This research has shown that by using formal modelling hidden bugs (e.g. vulnerability to attacks) in routing protocols can be detected automatically. In addition, through a rigorous testing, a new routing protocol, RAEED (Robust formally Analysed protocol for wirEless sEnsor networks Deployment), was developed which is able to operate effectively in the presence of hello flood, rushing, wormhole, black hole, gray hole, sink hole, INA and jamming attacks. It has been proved formally and using computer simulation that the RAEED can pacify these DoS attacks. A second contribution of this thesis relates to the development of a framework to check the vulnerability of different routing protocols against Denial of Service(DoS) attacks. This has allowed us to evaluate formally some existing and known routing protocols against various DoS attacks iand these include TinyOS Beaconing, Authentic TinyOS using uTesla, Rumour Routing, LEACH, Direct Diffusion, INSENS, ARRIVE and ARAN protocols. This has resulted in the development of an innovative and simple defence technique with no additional hardware cost for deployment against wormhole and INA attacks. In the thesis, the detection of weaknesses in INSENS, Arrive and ARAN protocols was also addressed formally. Finally, an e±cient design methodology using a combination of formal modelling and simulation is propose to evaluate the performances of routing protocols against DoS attacks

Key management for wireless sensor network security

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted great attention not only in industry but also in academia due to their enormous application potential and unique security challenges. A typical sensor network can be seen as a combination of a number of low-cost sensor nodes which have very limited computation and communication capability, memory space, and energy supply. The nodes are self-organized into a network to sense or monitor surrounding information in an unattended environment, while the self-organization property makes the networks vulnerable to various attacks.Many cryptographic mechanisms that solve network security problems rely directly on secure and efficient key management making key management a fundamental research topic in the field of WSNs security. Although key management for WSNs has been studied over the last years, the majority of the literature has focused on some assumed vulnerabilities along with corresponding countermeasures. Specific application, which is an important factor in determining the feasibility of the scheme, has been overlooked to a large extent in the existing literature.This thesis is an effort to develop a key management framework and specific schemes for WSNs by which different types of keys can be established and also can be distributed in a self-healing manner; explicit/ implicit authentication can be integrated according to the security requirements of expected applications. The proposed solutions would provide reliable and robust security infrastructure for facilitating secure communications in WSNs.There are five main parts in the thesis. In Part I, we begin with an introduction to the research background, problems definition and overview of existing solutions. From Part II to Part IV, we propose specific solutions, including purely Symmetric Key Cryptography based solutions, purely Public Key Cryptography based solutions, and a hybrid solution. While there is always a trade-off between security and performance, analysis and experimental results prove that each proposed solution can achieve the expected security aims with acceptable overheads for some specific applications. Finally, we recapitulate the main contribution of our work and identify future research directions in Part V

Recovery mechanism on sensor networks

On the completion of project, we propose novel recovery mechanisms which recovers limited-resource wireless sensor networks quickly from an malicious attack. The research outcomes include re-clustering algorithms, reprogramming techniques and authentications protocols developed and tested on both hardware and simulation platforms. The work is also well compared with other researchers