Enhanced source location privacy mechanism for WSNs

Abstract

Source location privacy in wireless sensor networks is an important security issue when a wireless sensor network is used in monitoring valuable assets or the source is a sensitive object. However, the open nature of a sensor network makes relatively easy for an adversary to detect message flows and trace back the message hop-by-hop to it source by moving in the reverse direction of the flows. Many schemes have been proposed recently to provide source location privacy but all performs poorly, because either with insufficient safety period or high energy consumption or data delivery delay. In this paper, after analysing privacy weakness of the cyclic entrapment method (CEM), we propose an enhanced scheme by introducing two mechanisms to provide strong location privacy against skilled adversary. The proposed strategy is principally based on false paths instead of loops and ensures that the arrival angle formed between the real and the real path is minimal. We evaluate our scheme based on two criteria: safety period, and ratio delivery. The simulation results show that our scheme improve safety period while keeping packets delivery ratio similar as in CEM method.