Trust-Aware Distributed and Adaptive Energy Efficient Secure Routing in Sensor Networks

The implementation of security on a wireless sensor network is a challenge since its resources are extremely constrained. The constituents and events in a wireless sensor network need to cope with the vagaries of adjacent malicious nodes to maintain self-sufficiency. Hence, we have worked on developing a trust management system based on a high trust value to counter the insider attacks. The algorithm works on a clustered network where the packets in the network are forwarded only to a trusted neighbor. Energy being an important constraint in any wireless sensor network, is conserved using energy efficient routing and homomorphic aggregation on clusters. The encrypted data packets are aggregated using privacy homomorphism and their corresponding authentication codes are also aggregated. The decryption being performed only at base station preserves the end-to-end confidentiality of the data. The algorithm works to ensure security at both data link layer and the network layer. The resultant algorithm improves the throughput of the network even in the presence of an adversary and has the capability to scale.