Title: Reliable data delivery in wireless sensor networks using distributed cluster monitoring

Authors: Uttara Korad, Krishna M. Sivalingam

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), 1000 Hilltop Circle, ITE 325, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA. ' Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), 1000 Hilltop Circle, ITE 325, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA

Abstract: In a clustering-based Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), cluster heads play an important role by serving as data forwarders amongst other network organisation functions. Thus, malfunctioning and/or compromised sensor nodes that serve as Cluster Head (CH) can lead to unreliable data delivery. In this paper, we propose a scheme (called Secure Low Energy Clustering (SecLEC)) that incorporates secure cluster head selection and distributed cluster head monitoring to achieve reliable data delivery. The SecLEC framework is flexible and can accommodate various tracking and monitoring mechanisms. Our goal in this paper is to understand the performance impact of adding such security mechanisms to the clustering architecture in terms of energy consumed and prevented data losses. Our experiments show that with SecLEC, BS detects such anomalous nodes with the latency of one network operation round and the data loss due to malicious nodes is up to 0.5% with a reasonable communication overhead.

Keywords: wireless sensor networks; WSN; wireless networks; sensor networks; security; distributed cluster monitoring; reliable data delivery; cluster head selection; energy consumption; data loss.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2006.010839

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2006 Vol.1 No.1/2, pp.75 - 83

Published online: 06 Sep 2006 *

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