Reputation-based cluster head elections in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In clustered sensor networks, because CHs (cluster heads) collect data from sensors and transmit the aggregated data to the sink, it is very important to elect the CHs in a secure manner. In order to protect CH elections from attackers, unpredictability, non-manipulability, and agreement property should be guaranteed in CH elections. However, existing schemes for secure CH election cannot prevent intelligent attackers from violating the properties via cooperation. In this paper, we propose a scheme that securely elects CHs by detecting intelligent attackers and excluding them. For every CH election round, each CH candidate provides reputation values to other CH candidates according to their behavior and extracts real reputation values. Then, each node evaluates the real reputation values of members in its cluster and excludes some disreputable nodes from CH candidates. The scheme greatly enhances the non-manipulability and agreement property of CH election results compared to other rival schemes. Furthermore, the scheme presents higher non-manipulability and higher agreement property than other schemes, even in an environment where message losses can occur.

A UAV-Aided Cluster Head Election Framework and Applying Such to Security-Driven Cluster Head Election Schemes: A Survey

“…For this reason, we categorize those schemes according to what they use to protect the CH elections and deal with each category and its representative schemes focusing on their adaption to the new UAV-aided CH election framework. We categorize the security-driven CH election schemes into predistributed key schemes [26,27], random number schemes [42,45], key chain schemes [28,44], and cryptographic schemes [31,41] in this paper. For each category of those schemes, we first reveal its basic operation and then explain some representative schemes.…”

“…Wang et al proposed a scheme [42] in which the trust values of all members are evaluated, and nodes with the lowest trust value are excluded from the CH candidates. Hereafter, we refer Wang's scheme to as the trust-based scheme.…”

“…Hereafter, we refer to these cluster formation schemes as CH-first schemes. In other clustering schemes [41][42][43][44][45], clusters are first formed through exchange of some messages and CHs of the clusters are later elected on the basis of a criterion or multiple criteria. These cluster formation schemes are referred to as cluster-first schemes, hereafter.…”

“…In a clustered WSN, if a compromised node is elected as a CH, this node can not only illegally obtain data from normal nodes but also forge data delivered to the sink. Furthermore, because attackers can grasp the control of the whole network by compromising a small number of CHs, compromising all CHs is a very attractive target for them [42]. Because a UAV-based WSN also suffers from the same vulnerabilities, secure CH election for the UAV-based WSN is essential for its successful operation.…”

“…Because a UAV-based WSN also suffers from the same vulnerabilities, secure CH election for the UAV-based WSN is essential for its successful operation. Up to now, a lot of research works dealing with CH election security for general WSNs [26][27][28][29][30][31][41][42][43][44][45] have been proposed. However, to our best knowledge, there is no study dealing with CH election security for a UAVbased WSN.…”