Imposter Detection in Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks
Ebrahim A. Alrashed, Mehmet Hakan Karaata · International Journal of Computer and Communication Engineering · 2014
Mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) are wireless networks of small sensors moving around in a specified coverage area, conveying their readings and data to static or mobile base stations.In contrast to a static wireless sensor network where the fixed node position can be used to authenticate a sensor node, the changing position of a node in a MWSN cannot be used in the authentication process.This can lead to imposters posing as legitimate nodes anywhere in the network.An imposter can use the identity of a legitimate node to communicate within the network and eavesdrop on confidential communication or to send false information.In this paper, we propose a novel scheme which employs nonce-values and blackout-time mechanisms to detect imposters in the network.The proposed scheme employs a quarantining mechanism to quarantine the detected imposters, and a node-restoration mechanism to appropriately authenticate and restore quarantined nodes into the network.