A trust enhancement scheme for cluster-based wireless sensor networks

Security is crucial in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) since a growing variety of applications require strict security. Cluster-based architecture has an enhancement in the system performance of WSNs. This article presents a trust enhancement scheme for cluster-based WSNs, where network time is divided into multiple rounds. Each round contains a setup phase and a steady-state phase. In the setup phase, clusters are formed and mutual trusted relationships between cluster nodes are established through two proposed authentication protocols called SET-TESLA (Setup TESLA) and SET-SCHNORR (Setup SCHNORR). SET-TESLA uses the authenticated broadcast TESLA scheme and reduces the iterations of hash function to improve the energy efficiency, while SET-SCHNORR applies a lightweight signature SCHNORR scheme. In the steady-state phase, collected environmental or physical data are transmitted through the proposed STEADY-TESLA protocol (Steady-state TESLA), which guarantees the data credibility. The analysis demonstrates that the security scheme does well in resisting such attacks as data confidentiality attacks, data integrity attacks and compromise node attacks. In addition, the results of calculations and simulations show that the proposed scheme performs better than the existing security protocols in terms of communication overhead and energy consumption.