Application-based Classification and Comparison of Secure Routing Protocols in Wireless sensor Networks
Imran Ali Khan, Hafiz Farooq Ahmad, Waleed Akram Baig, Mudasser Naseer · 2015
Wireless Sensor Networks is an emergent field in computer network domains, and routing plays a key role in every wireless sensor network. In a wireless sensor network, an adversary can disturb the entire network by attacking routing services. These attacks are relatively easy to deploy against a wireless sensor network as opposed to traditional wired networks, because of the unattended nature of the deployment of sensor nodes. In the case of wireless sensor networks, the compromised routing messages result in the diffusion of incorrect routing information, which can disrupt network behavior. When considering these realities, securing a routing protocol is a key objective of every wireless sensor network. In this paper, we analyze different secure routing protocols and do a comprehensive survey in terms of their application areas, key distribution schemes, authentication schemes, basic security requirements, and their defense against different attacks. To make our survey more precise, we categorized the secure routing protocols into four groups: secure data-centric, secure hierarchical, secure location-based, and secure quality-of-service routing protocols. All secure routing protocols discussed in this survey paper fall under these four categories.