Black-Hole Attack Mitigation in Medical Sensor Networks Using the Enhanced Gravitational Search Algorithm

Abstract

In today’s world, one of the most severe attacks that wireless sensor networks (WSNs) face is a Black-Hole (BH) attack which is a type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack. This attack blocks data and injects infected programs into a set of sensors in a group to capture packets before reached to the target. Therefore, raw data in the BH region is thwarted and is unable to reach its destination. The network is susceptible to various types of attacks as it is accessible to all types of users and minimizing the energy depletion without compromising the network lifetime is an NP-hard problem. Even though numerous protocols came into effect to overcome the BH attack and to enhance the security of packet delivery in WSNs, Simulated Annealing Black-hole attack Detection (SABD) based Enhanced Gravitational Search Algorithm (EGSA) is yet another implemented strategy to reduce the BH attacks. EGSA-SABD detects and isolates the BH infectors in WSNs. Initially, sensor nodes are hierarchically clustered using similar residual energy to reduce energy consumption. Then, the BH attack possibility in a deployed node is evaluated to find the existence of BH nodes in the region. In the end, EGSA-SABD is employed to detect and quarantine BH attackers in WSNs. The performance of EGSA-SABD is evaluated with certain metrics such as BH attack detection probability rate (BHatt_Prate), energy consumption (Ec), Duration of BH attack detection (Attduration), Packet delivery ratio (Pdr). Based on the experimental observations, the EGSA-SABD outperforms the BHatt_Prate by 13% and also reduces the energy consumption by 21%.