Secure and energy-efficient data aggregation for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are now in widespread use to monitor regions, detect events and acquire information. Since the deployed nodes are separated, they need to cooperatively communicate sensed data to the base station. To maximise WSN lifetime, it is essential to minimise the number of bits sent and received by each device. To reduce the amount of sending data, an aggregation approach can be applied along the path from sensors to the sink. Data aggregation in wireless sensor networks is employed to reduce the communication overhead and prolong the network lifetime. However, an adversary may compromise some sensor nodes, and use them to forge false values as the aggregation result. In this paper two secure and energy-efficient data aggregation schemes have been proposed; these schemes can detect the malicious nodes. The goal of the algorithms used in these schemes is to ensure that the base station BS does not accept any forged aggregation results. The proposed two protocols present different trade-offs between computations, communication, and security and can fit a wide variety of application areas.