Detecting Misbehaving Forwarders in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Hierarchical Algorithm

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consists of large number of sensing nodes used for sensing, computational and transmission power. Generally in a typical deployment of sensor networks, the sensor nodes are randomly deployed in a two dimensional area. One of the major challenges that wireless sensor networks face today is security. As sensors have limited power and computational capability, any security mechanism for sensor network must be energy efficient and should not be computational intensive. Packet dropping and modification are common attacks that can be initiated to interrupt communication in wireless multi-hop sensor networks. Many methods have been proposed to endure such attacks but only few can successfully identify the intruders. To overcome this problem, a simple effective method has been proposed using hierarchical algorithm, which identifies misbehaving forwarders that drop or modify packets then eliminate them and choose the alternative path for data transmission. Extensive analysis and simulations have been conducted to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of this method.