Malicious Cluster Head Detection Mechanism in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In wireless ad hoc network, all nodes participate for the transmission of data within the network and responsible for designing network topology. Suspicious and malicious activities can be detected by different techniques like IDS that is dynamic in nature. In clustering environment all the communication is carried out through cluster heads, we are having two cluster heads a primary cluster head (PCH) and secondary cluster heads (SCH) where SCHs communicate via PCH and if one of the secondary cluster head is compromised the entire network will be affected so malfunctioning of cluster head must be detected and identified. To handle this issue, we proposed a secure mechanism that provides security by minimum utilization of the resources after detection and identification the malicious Cluster Head. The proposed mechanism based on two level thresholds for the detection and identification of malicious cluster head that is dropping packets because of some attack. We used watchdog technique for initial monitoring. An agent is launched for detection and identification of the packets dropping problem. It is specially designed for secure UDP traffic transmission and fake report detection done by any of the malicious SCH to PCH.