Abstract
In clustered sensor networks, electing CHs (Cluster Heads) in a secure manner is very important because they collect data from sensors and send the aggregated data to the sink. If a compromised node is elected as a CH, it can illegally acquire data from all the members and even send forged data to the sink. Nevertheless, most of the existing CH election schemes have not treated the problem of the secure CH election. Recently, random value based protocols have been proposed to resolve the secure CH election problem. However, these schemes cannot prevent an attacker from suppressing its contribution for the change of CH election result and from selectively forwarding its contribution for the disagreement of CH election result. In this paper, we propose a modified random value scheme to prevent these disturbances. Our scheme dynamically adjusts the forwarding order of contributions and discards a received contribution when its signal strength is lower than the specified level to prevent these malicious actions. The simulation results have shown that our scheme effectively prevents attackers from changing and splitting an agreement of CH election result. Also, they have shown that our scheme is relatively energy-efficient than other schemes.
Highlights
Cluster structures are frequently employed in wireless sensor networks
In the clustered sensor network, the compromise of Cluster Head (CH) is more threatening than that of member sensors, and CHs are located in the unprotected environment like member sensors
We have shown that the existing CH election schemes did not deal effectively with some malicious actions of smart attackers
Summary
Cluster structures are frequently employed in wireless sensor networks. These cluster structures enable the energy conservation in sensors [1,2], load balancing [3], distributed key management [4,5], and so on. Because CHs are the data collection points, smart attackers may compromise the network by targeting the CHs rather than the other sensors. The primary problem of the existing CH election schemes is that legitimate nodes cannot prevent a malicious node from fabricating its criterion and transmitting the fabricated criterion. An attacker may reduce the power level of a contribution message to make receivers have a different set of contributions It increases the number of CHs in the network and reduces the size of clusters. Energy consumption of sensors increases due to frequent transmission of sensor readings To prevent this misbehavior, all receivers of a contribution measure the signal strength power of the contribution and infer the approximately reachable distance of the contribution.
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