Multi-branch Source Location Privacy Protection Scheme Based on Random Walk in WSNs

Abstract

In many applications, source nodes send the sensing information of the monitored objects and the sinks receive the transmitted data. Considering the limited resources of sensor nodes, location privacy preservation becomes an important issue. Although many schemes are proposed to preserve source or sink location security, few schemes can preserve the location security of source nodes and sinks. In order to solve this problem, we propose a novel of multi-branch source location privacy protection method based on random walk. This method hides the location of real source nodes by setting multiple proxy sources. And multiple neighbors are randomly selected by the real source node as receivers until a proxy source receives the packet. In addition, the proxy source is chosen randomly, which can prevent the attacker from obtaining the location-related data of the real source node. At the same time, the scheme sets up a branch interference area around the base station to interfere with the adversary by increasing routing branches. Simulation results describe that our scheme can efficiently protect source and sink location privacy, reduce the communication overhead, and prolong the network lifetime.