Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks Research Articles

EAHKM+: energy-aware secure clustering scheme in wireless sensor networks

The effective technique to save energy in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is clustering. However, organising WSNs into clusters securely is a challenging task in regard to the vulnerabilities of these networks. In this paper, we provide a secured cluster formation by proposing a new symmetric key management scheme for hierarchical WSNs (HWSNs). The new scheme is called EAHKM+ (energy aware hierarchical key management in WSNs). Only three keys are pre-distributed in each sensor node before deployment. EAHKM+ assures the establishment of a pairwise key between each sensor node and its cluster head, thus the establishment of a broadcast key in each cluster in the network. Through comparison with other proposed key management schemes in hierarchical WSNs, we show that EAHKM+ is an energy-efficient, flexible, robust and scalable solution to the key management problem in clustered WSNs.

Cluster-based optimal wireless sensor deployment for structural health monitoring

A well-designed wireless sensor deployment method not only directly influences the number of deployed sensors and data accuracy, but also influences on network topology. As most of the energy cost comes from the transmission and receiving of data packets, clustering optimization in wireless sensor network becomes an important issue for energy-efficient coordination among the densely deployed nodes for data communication. In a typical hierarchical wireless sensor network, total intra-cluster communication distance and total distance of cluster heads to base station depend on number of cluster heads. This work presents a novel approach by selecting the number of clusters in hierarchical wireless sensor network. We analyze and demonstrate the validity of the cluster optimization for wireless sensor deployment using an example of a numerically simulated simply supported truss, in terms of efficient use of the constrained wireless sensor network resources. Followed by a cluster-based optimization framework, we show how to adopt our approach to achieve scalable and efficient deployment, through a comprehensive optimization study of a realistic wireless structural health monitoring system. Finally, we suggest optimal deployment scheme based on the comparative performance evaluation results in the case study.

Identifying Energy Holes in Randomly Deployed Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper proposes a novel protocol, called an aggregation-based topology learning (ATL) protocol, to identify energy holes in a randomly deployed hierarchical wireless sensor network (HWSN). The approach taken in the protocol design is to learn the routing topology of a tree-structured HWSN in real-time, as an integral part of the sensed data collection and aggregation process in the network. The learnt topology is then examined to identify high energy-consuming nodes, that are more likely to create energy holes in the network. The major challenge in designing this protocol is to code topology data in such a way that it can be carried in length-constrained messages supported by current sensor technologies. To address this challenge, three topology coding methods are proposed. A theoretical analysis of the three topology coding methods is carried out to find the optimum method among the three, and this optimum method is used in the ATL protocol. The ATL protocol is tested and evaluated on a real WSN test bed in terms of completeness, correctness and energy costs. Based on the evaluation results, we have identified two classes of high energy-consuming nodes, which are: 1) nodes that carry topology data from more downstream nodes and 2) nodes that more frequently switch between different upstream nodes. This finding is significant as it provides an insight as how topology-learning, as well as data collection, may be used to prolong the life-time of a HWSN. In addition, the evaluation results also show that the energy cost incurred in a data collection process integrated with our proposed topology-learning facility is at a similar level as for the process without the facility, thereby implying that the cost incurred in topology-learning by using our proposed method is negligible. These findings indicate that, by integrating the topology-learning process with the sensed data collection and aggregation process, the ATL protocol can identify high energy-consuming nodes, i.e., nodes that are more likely to create energy holes, in a random HWSN deployment, in an effective and cost-efficient manner.

Energy-efficient multi-mode clusters maintenance (M2CM) for hierarchical wireless sensor networks

How to energy-efficiently maintain the topology of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is still a difficult problem because of their numerous nodes, highly dynamic nature, varied application scenarios and limited resources. An energy-efficient multi-mode clusters maintenance (M2CM) method is proposed based on localized and event-driven mechanism in this work, which is different from the conventional clusters maintenance model with always periodically re-clustered among the whole network style based on time-trigger for hierarchical WSNs. M2CM can meet such demands of clusters maintenance as adaptive local maintenance for the damaged clusters according to its changes in time and space field., the triggers of M2CM include such events as nodes' residual energy being under the threshold, the load imbalance of cluster head, joining in or exiting from any cluster for new node or disable one, etc. Based on neighboring relationship of the damaged clusters, one can start a single cluster (inner-cluster) maintenance or clusters (inter-cluster) maintenance program to meet diverse demands in the topology management of hierarchical WSNs. The experiment results based on NS2 simulation show that the proposed method can significantly save energy used in maintaining a damaged network, effectively narrow down the influenced area of clusters maintenance, and increase transmitted data and prolong lifetime of network compared to the traditional schemes.

A collusion‐resistant dynamic key management scheme for WSNs

AbstractKey management is an important security service for protecting wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Among various existing schemes, exclusion basis system (EBS) is a practical solution that can be easily implemented to provide long‐term and flexible protection for WSNs. The involved rekeying strategy in EBS can efficiently evict the compromised node and update the key system. However, the relatively small key pool leads to high correlation among the generated key rings. Consequently, it is almost impossible for EBS‐based schemes to efficiently defend collusion attack with their rekeying mechanisms. In this paper, we first analyze the impact of collusion attack on WSNs, especially that in the case where the keys of the compromised nodes can form a connected graph. Then, we propose a novel key management scheme based on EBS. The proposed scheme is termed as t‐EEBS because it can effectively resist the referred collusion attack formed by t(t > 1) nodes. Furthermore, we assume that the proposed scheme is implemented in hierarchical WSNs. In this case, two layers of t‐EEBS administrative keys are used. The upper layer is implemented among the base station and all cluster leaders, while the lower layer involves a t‐EEBS for each cluster. The results of performance evaluation show that the proposed scheme has better resistance to collusion attack than other schemes. Therefore, the proposed scheme can provide better security service for WSNs. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Multi-mode clustering model for hierarchical wireless sensor networks

The topology management, i.e., clusters maintenance, of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is still a challenge due to its numerous nodes, diverse application scenarios and limited resources as well as complex dynamics. To address this issue, a multi-mode clustering model (M2CM) is proposed to maintain the clusters for hierarchical WSNs in this study. In particular, unlike the traditional time-trigger model based on the whole-network and periodic style, the M2CM is proposed based on the local and event-trigger operations. In addition, an adaptive local maintenance algorithm is designed for the broken clusters in the WSNs using the spatial–temporal demand changes accordingly. Numerical experiments are performed using the NS2 network simulation platform. Results validate the effectiveness of the proposed model with respect to the network maintenance costs, node energy consumption and transmitted data as well as the network lifetime.

Design of sinkhole node detection mechanism for hierarchical wireless sensor networks

AbstractWireless sensor networks (WSNs) have several applications ranging from the civilian to military applications. WSNs are prone to various hole attacks, such as sinkhole, wormhole, blackhole, and greyhole. Among these hole attacks, the sinkhole attack is the malignant one. A sinkhole attack allows a malicious node, called the sinkhole node, advertises a best possible path to the base station (BS). This misguides its neighbors to utilize that path more frequently. The sinkhole node has the opportunity to tamper with the data, and it also performs the modifications in messages or it drops messages or it produces unnecessary delay before forwarding them to the BS. On the basis of these malicious acts that are performed by a sinkhole attacker node, we consider three types of malicious nodes in a WSN: sinkhole message modification node (SMD), sinkhole message dropping node (SDP), and sinkhole message delay node (SDL). None of the existing techniques in the literature is capable to handle all three types of nodes at a time. This paper presents a new detection scheme for the detection of different types of sinkhole nodes for a hierarchical wireless sensor network (HWSN). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to design such a detection scheme in HWSNs which can detect SMD, SDP, and SDL nodes. In our approach, the entire HWSN is divided into several disjoint clusters, and each cluster has a powerful high‐end sensor node (called a cluster head), which is responsible for the detection of different sinkhole attacker nodes if present in that cluster. We simulate our scheme using the widely‐accepted NS2 simulator for measurement of various network parameters. The proposed scheme achieves around 95% detection rate and 1.25% false positive rate. These factors are significantly better than the previous related schemes. Furthermore, the computation and communication efficiency is achieved in our scheme. As a result, our scheme seems suitable for the sensitive critical applications, such as military applications. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Reliable and Energy Efficient Communication Algorithm in Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are data centric networks, which transmit gathered data to sink nodes. Considering energy constraints, how to make full use of the limited energy to reliably transmit data as much as possible becomes a main research region in sensor networks. In this paper, we focus on energy consumption and reliability of different communication modes. Single hop communication mode is simple and easy to implement, but the distant cluster members, especially those on the edge of the networks, need to enlarge transmission power. On the other hand multi-hop communication is not constrained by the communication distance. The relay communication mode guarantees data transmission to a remote cluster head. Considering of the reliability and energy consumption, we propose a voting based clustering communication algorithm. And the optimal cluster number is calculated based on the geometry locations. Finally, several experiments have been done to validate the analysis in this paper.

A Survey of Energy Efficient Clustering Algorithms in Wireless Sensor Networks

To make the most of network lifetime in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) the paths for data transfer are chosen in a manner that the total energy utilized along the path is minimized. To support high scalability and better data aggregation, sensor nodes are regularly assembled into disjoint, non overlapping subsets called clusters. Clusters create hierarchical WSNs which incorporate efficient utilization of limited resources of sensor nodes and thus extends network lifetime. The goal of this paper is to show a cutting edge review on clustering algorithms reported in the literature of WSNs. This paper presents various energy efficient clustering algorithms in WSNs.

Seamless Streaming Data Delivery in Cluster-Based Wireless Sensor Networks With Mobile Elements

Exploiting mobility improves the energy efficiency of data collection in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for many applications. As more and more multimedia sensor nodes, equipped with audio and video capture capabilities are employed to characterize a sensing environment, streaming data are becoming increasingly important in WSNs. However, the mobility of MEs poses challenges on how to efficiently provide uninterrupted message delivery for continuous data streams in WSNs. In this paper, we propose a seamless streaming data delivery (SSDD) protocol for multihop cluster-based WSNs with MEs. Different from existing works, we concentrate on the localized mobility support for the delivery of streaming data in hierarchical WSNs. By introducing a cross-cluster handover mechanism and a path redirection scheme, SSDD efficiently maintains the end-to-end connectivity between a source and a ME during data transmission while avoiding most of the overhead in broadcasting the location of the ME as it moves in the sensing field. Extensive evaluation results demonstrate the effectiveness and high scalability of SSDD in terms of both energy efficiency and delivery latency.

An efficient multi‐gateway‐based three‐factor user authentication and key agreement scheme in hierarchical wireless sensor networks

AbstractUser authentication in wireless sensor network (WSN) plays a very important role in which a legal registered user is allowed to access the real‐time sensing information from the sensor nodes inside WSN. To allow such access, a user needs to be authenticated by the accessed sensor nodes as well as gateway nodes inside WSNs. Because of resource limitations and vulnerability to physical capture of some sensor nodes by an attacker, design of a secure user authentication in WSN continues to be an important and challenging research area in recent years. In this paper, we propose a new three‐factor user authentication scheme based on the multi‐gateway WSN architecture. Through the widely‐accepted Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic, we prove that our scheme provides the secure mutual authentication. We then present the formal security verification of our proposed scheme using AVISPA tool, which is a powerful validation tool for network security applications, and show that our scheme is secure. In addition, the rigorous informal security analysis shows that our scheme is also secure against possible other known attacks including the sensor node capture attack. Furthermore, we present the additional functionality features that our scheme offers, which are efficient in communication and computation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Forest Monitoring and Wildland Early Fire Detection by a Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Network

A wildland fire is an uncontrolled fire that occurs mainly in forest areas, although it can also invade urban or agricultural areas. Among the main causes of wildfires, human factors, either intentional or accidental, are the most usual ones. The number and impact of forest fires are expected to grow as a consequence of the global warming. In order to fight against these disasters, it is necessary to adopt a comprehensive, multifaceted approach that enables a continuous situational awareness and instant responsiveness. This paper describes a hierarchical wireless sensor network aimed atearly fire detection in risky areas, integrated with the fire fighting command centres, geographical information systems, and fire simulators. This configuration has been successfully tested in two fire simulations involving all the key players in fire fighting operations: fire brigades, communication systems, and aerial, coordination, and land means.

BEST-MAC: Bitmap-Assisted Efficient and Scalable TDMA-Based WSN MAC Protocol for Smart Cities

Smart cities have been envisioned during the last decade. Moreover, various projects have been initiated to bring this concept into reality. Smart city is basically an emergence of the existing and new Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to make our living standard more safe and digitized. Wireless communications, such as sensors, actuators, intelligent transportation systems, and smart grids, have played a vital role in the dissemination of information under the given circumstances. Similarly, it is hard to declare any city as a smart city without taking benefits from wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, with new requirements and delay sensitive applications, the existing WSN requires significant alterations at several layers. In this paper, a new time division multiple access (TDMA)-based medium access control (MAC) protocol, called bitmap-assisted efficient and scalable TDMA-based MAC (BEST-MAC), is proposed for adaptive traffic in hierarchical WSNs that can be deployed in the smart cities. BEST-MAC is specifically designed to improve the quality control of such smart cities applications, where diverse traffic is required and loss or delay in data traffic is unacceptable. The main contributions of BEST-MAC include: 1) it uses small size time slots; 2) the number of those time slots is more than the number of member nodes; 3) knapsack algorithm is used to schedule time slots; and 4) short node address (1 B) is proposed to identify the member nodes. First two contributions of BEST-MAC handle adaptive traffic loads of all members in an efficient manner. The knapsack algorithm not only reduces the job completion time of a node but also minimizes the average packet delay with better link utilization. The short node address reduces the control overhead that improves the energy efficiency. The simulation results verify that the proposed BEST-MAC transmits more data with less delay and energy consumption compared with the existing MAC protocols.

An Efficient Fine-grained Access Control Scheme for Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

Fine-grained access control is used to assign unique access privilege to a particular user for accessing real-time data directly from the nodes inside wireless sensor network (WSNs). In this paper, we propose a new fine-grained access control scheme based on key policy attribute based encryption (KP-ABE) suitable for hierarchical WSNs. The protocol provides fine-grained access control with authentication along with efficient user revocation and new node deployment policy. Instead of being quite lightweight in nature, the scheme resists many active and passive security attacks. For formal authentication proof and simulation we use BAN logic and widely accepted AVISPA model checkers respectively.

A New Routing Algorithm for Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become an interesting area to researchers in recent years due to the lowcost of sensor nodes, wide application areas and with low or no cost of maintenance after deployment in a target area. In some sensor system applications, the nodes are hard to reach and it is impossible to replace their batteries. So the nodes must operate without battery replacement for a long time. Such conditions make the system power consumption a very crucial parameter. Thus, Clustering is an energy efficient way that divides sensor nodes into many clusters, each of which has a cluster head. In this paper a new cluster-based routing algorithm for hierarchical WSNs has been proposed to select an alternative node to get replaced in place of node which loses its energy such that it extends the lifetime of entire network and avoids data loss. The simulation results show that, for large scale WSNs, our proposed algorithm performs better than the typical existing routing algorithms in terms of network lifetime.

A Two level Detection of Routing Layer Attacks in Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks using Learning based Energy Prediction

Wireless sensor networks are often organized in the form of clusters leading to the new framework of WSN called cluster or hierarchical WSN where each cluster head is responsible for its own cluster and its members. These hierarchical WSN are prone to various routing layer attacks such as Black hole, Gray hole, Sybil, Wormhole, Flooding etc. These routing layer attacks try to spoof, falsify or drop the packets during the packet routing process. They may even flood the network with unwanted data packets. If one cluster head is captured and made malicious, the entire cluster member nodes beneath the cluster get affected. On the other hand if the cluster member nodes are malicious, due to the broadcast wireless communication between all the source nodes it can disrupt the entire cluster functions. Thereby a scheme which can detect both the malicious cluster member and cluster head is the current need. Abnormal energy consumption of nodes is used to identify the malicious activity. To serve this purpose a learning based energy prediction algorithm is proposed. Thus a two level energy prediction based intrusion detection scheme to detect the malicious cluster head and cluster member is proposed and simulations were carried out using NS2-Mannasim framework. Simulation results achieved good detection ratio and less false positive.

An Intrusion Detection System Based on Multi-Level Clustering for Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

In this work, an intrusion detection system (IDS) framework based on multi-level clustering for hierarchical wireless sensor networks is proposed. The framework employs two types of intrusion detection approaches: (1) “downward-IDS (D-IDS)” to detect the abnormal behavior (intrusion) of the subordinate (member) nodes; and (2) “upward-IDS (U-IDS)” to detect the abnormal behavior of the cluster heads. By using analytical calculations, the optimum parameters for the D-IDS (number of maximum hops) and U-IDS (monitoring group size) of the framework are evaluated and presented.

DWDH: directed and weighted dynamics of hierarchical wireless sensor networks

Hierarchical topology control is an efficient technique and commonly used in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Complex network theory is used for depicting and investigating structures and functions of natural and artificial networks/systems. In this paper, we explore directed and weighted dynamics of hierarchical WSNs, based on complex network theory. Early work did not considerate edge directions and attribute of heterogeneous node. We present two dynamic evolution models, which consider link/communication directions in real WSNs, and two kinds of nodes: router node and normal node are introduced into two evolution models with directed weighted edges. Then we conduct theoretical analysis by using statistical physics approach. With numerical simulations, the results show that two models fit well with expect goals. The two models could be extended in some practical projects and have better effects than common un-weighted network model.

TMS‐HCW: a trust management system in hierarchical clustered wireless sensor networks

AbstractHierarchical clustered wireless sensor networks (WSNs) usually consist of many tiny sensor nodes, cluster heads, and the Sink. Problems like insecure operational environments, nodes' misbehavior, and improper selection of peer nodes lead to significantly degrade the overall performance of WSNs and their vulnerability to many attacks. In another direction, WSNs often have vital and crisis duties, and most of the traditional security mechanisms are unsuitable for them. So, security is a vital and complex requirement for WSNs to improve their performance. One significant security solution is trust management system (TMS). TMS enhances the security by verifying the untrustworthy nodes; it also improves the cooperation among nodes and increases the network performance. But, TMS is a highly challenging issue in WSNs because of high overhead and computational complexity, limited resources, nodes' high density, dynamic topology, and nodes' mobility. As a result, this paper proposes a highly scalable TMS for hierarchical clustered WSNs, called TMS‐HCW. In TMS‐HCW, each cluster head calculates the trustworthiness of its cluster's members, verifies the untrustworthy members, and removes them from the WSN's processes. TMS‐HCW is different from other existing TMSs in terms of trustworthiness calculation criteria, trustworthiness calculation procedure, and trustworthiness forecasting capability. TMS‐HCW combines the past misbehavior with the current status in a comprehensive way to obtain the robust trust values; it also uses the statistical quantitative methods with high accuracy in the trustworthiness forecasting process. The performance of TMS‐HCW is compared with the performance of Group‐based trust management scheme for clustered wireless sensor networks (GTMS) and PowerTrust TMSs; simulation results and theoretical statistical analyses indicate that TMS‐HCW is improved in terms of energy consumption, accuracy, traffic overhead, and scalability and fault tolerance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Atypical Hierarchical Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Review

Hierarchical routing in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a very important topic that has been attracting the research community in the last decade. Typical hierarchical routing is called clustering routing, in which the network is divided into multiple clusters. Recently, some types of atypical hierarchical routing arise, including chain-based, tree-based, grid-based routing, and area-based routing. There are several survey papers that present and compare the hierarchical routing protocols from various perspectives, but a survey on atypical hierarchical routing is still missing. This paper makes a first attempt to provide a comprehensive review on atypical hierarchical routing. We offer a classification of atypical hierarchical routing of WSNs, and give detailed analysis of different logical topologies. The most representative atypical hierarchical routing protocols are described, discussed, and qualitatively compared. In particular, the advantages and disadvantages of different atypical hierarchical routing protocols are analyzed with respect to their significant performances and application scenarios. Finally, we put forward some open issues concerning the design of hierarchical WSNs. This survey aims to provide useful guidance for system designers on how to evaluate and select appropriate logical topologies and hierarchical routing protocols for specific applications.