An Experimental Analysis on the Behavior and Influence of the Selfish Sensor Nodes on Node Scheduling in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Sensor nodes are often densely deployed in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) applications, due to the constraints such as computing and processing capabilities, energy supply, etc. Node scheduling mechanisms can greatly prolong network lifetime, through reasonable scheduling of the work/sleep states of the coordinated nodes, and the handling of communication interference in the work state and the data transmission redundancy. However, for saving energy, there are inevitably a part of the nodes that are selfish in the monitoring applications. Based on the characteristics of node scheduling, we discover three types of selfish nodes in node scheduling. Through experimental simulations, we analyze the influence of the selfish nodes on the coverage and energy of their neighbors, and on the network performance, measured in terms of network coverage, network lifetime and the balancedness of energy consumption. Experimental results show that, selfish nodes can breach the coordination among the nodes, violate the goal of node scheduling and reduce network lifetime. By analyzing the behavior and impact of the selfish nodes, this work provides important experimental evidence for the detection and punishment of selfish nodes.