Secure and Reliable Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Critical Survey

in Computer Networks (2012), 56(11), 27262741

In the past few years, research interest has been increased towards wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and their application in both the military and civil domains. To support scalability in WSNs and ... [more ▼]

In the past few years, research interest has been increased towards wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and their application in both the military and civil domains. To support scalability in WSNs and increase network lifetime, nodes are often grouped into disjoint clusters. However, secure and reliable clustering, which is critical in WSNs deployed in hostile environments, has gained modest attention so far or has been limited only to fault tolerance. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art of clustering protocols in WSNs with special emphasis on security and reliability issues. First, we define a taxonomy of security and reliability for cluster head election and clustering in WSNs. Then, we describe and analyze the most relevant secure and reliable clustering protocols. Finally, we propose countermeasures against typical attacks and show how they improve the discussed protocols. [less ▲]

PANEL: Position-based Aggregator Node Election in Wireless Sensor Networks

in International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks (2010), 2010

We introduce PANEL a position-based aggregator node election protocol for wireless sensor networks. The novelty of PANEL with respect to other aggregator node election protocols is that it supports ... [more ▼]

We introduce PANEL a position-based aggregator node election protocol for wireless sensor networks. The novelty of PANEL with respect to other aggregator node election protocols is that it supports asynchronous sensor network applications where the sensor readings are fetched by the base stations after some delay. In particular, the motivation for the design of PANEL was to support reliable and persistent data storage applications, such as TinyPEDS; see the study by Girao et al. (2007). PANEL ensures load balancing, and it supports intra and intercluster routing allowing sensor-to-aggregator, aggregator-to-aggregator, base station-to-aggregator, and aggregator to-base station communications. We also compare PANEL with HEED; see the study by Younis and Fahmy (2004) in the simulation environment provided by TOSSIM, and show that, on one hand, PANEL creates more cohesive clusters than HEED, and, on the other hand, that PANEL is more energy efficient than HEED. [less ▲]