Cross‐layer technique for boosting base‐station anonymity in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

SummaryA wireless sensor network (WSN) principally is composed of many sensor nodes and a single in situ base station (BS), which are randomly distributed in a given area of interest. These sensor nodes transmit their measurements to the BS over multihop wireless paths. In addition to collecting and processing the sensed data, the BS performs network management operations. Because of the importance of the BS to the WSN, it is the most attractive target of attacks for an adversary. Basically, the adversary opts to locate the BS and target it with denial‐of‐service attack to temporarily or indefinitely disrupt the WSN operation. The adversary can intercept the data packet transmissions and use traffic analysis techniques such as evidence theory to uncover the routing topology. To counter such an attack, this paper presents a novel technique for boosting the BS anonymity by grouping nodes into clusters and creating multiple mesh‐based routing topologies among the cluster heads (CHs). By applying the closed space‐filling curves such as the Moore curve, for forming a mesh, the CHs are offered a number of choices for disseminating aggregated data to the BS through inter‐CH paths. Then, the BS forwards the aggregated data as well so that it appears as one of the CHs. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique in boosting the anonymity of the BS.