Secure communication in mobile underwater wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Underwater sensor networks (UWSN) provide a promising solution for several aquatic applications. Mobile UWSNs are vulnerable to various threats because of their harsh environment, acoustic communication channel, bandwidth limitation, high propagation delay, multipath effect, and mobility. Therefore, appropriate security mechanisms should be included in networking services, such as localization, to facilitate time critical applications. In this paper, we discuss various Denial-of-Service attacks in mobile UWSNs. We simulated a flooding attack and an out-of-coverage problem caused by mobility by using Aqua-Sim, and analyzed their impact on UWSN performance. In addition, we surveyed UWSN localization techniques and secure localization schemes of terrestrial wireless sensor networks (WSN). Simulation experiments were conducted to analyze the performance variation between mobile UWSNs and mobile WSNs. The study concluded that the variation in the network performance of mobile UWSNs varies from that of WSNs. Therefore, the security mechanisms proposed for terrestrial WSNs are unsuitable for UWSNs.