A Secure Cluster Formation Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks, clustering expedites many desirable functions such as load balancing, energy savings, and distributed key management. For secure clustering, it is very important to find compromised nodes and remove them during the initial cluster formation process. If some nodes are compromised and survive the censorship process, they can make some nodes have a different cluster view and can split a cluster into multiple clusters to deteriorate cluster quality as a whole. To resolve these problems, we propose a robust scheme against such attacks in this paper. First, our scheme generates large-sized clusters where any two nodes are at most two hops away from each other to raise the quality of clusters. Second, our scheme employs the verification of two-hop distant nodes to preserve the quality of the large-sized clusters and refrains from splitting the clusters. Last, our scheme prefers broadcast transmissions to save the energy of nodes. Security analysis proves that our scheme can identify compromised nodes and preserves the cluster membership agreement against the compromised nodes. In addition, simulation results prove that our scheme generates fewer clusters and is more secure and energy efficient than the scheme producing only small-sized clusters.

Privacy preservation of sink node location in wireless sensor network using RFSN-RSA

“…The energy is consumed in a node while transmitting and receiving the packets. All sensor nodes are grouped into clusters based [8] on the distance between the nodes and energy of each node in the network. In our proposed system highest energy nodes will be considered as cluster heads (CH).…”

Securing Cluster Head Elections in Wireless Sensor Networks

“…In this paper, we only focus on those steps after the secure cluster formation. Please refer to [1], [7], [8] concerning the secure cluster formation. In the candidate reselection step, nodes pick up behaving nodes among all members in their cluster.…”

“…Some cluster formation protocols [1], [7], [8] can be employed for that purpose. We also assume that all pairs of members in a cluster have established a pairwise key with each other.…”

“…A cluster structure is generated by transforming a physical network into logical groups of nodes which are called clusters [1]. Wireless sensor networks frequently adopt the cluster structure to save energy consumption of nodes and to extend the network longevity.…”

“…If a cluster needs a local coordinator which is called CH (Cluster Head), a node is selected as a CH among the members. Because a CH node not only gathers the data from the normal nodes but also sends the gathered data to the sink, it becomes a compromise target for attackers [1]. Even worse, if all CHs are compromised by attackers, the attackers get the whole control of the network.…”