A multi-path interleaved hop-by-hop en-route filtering scheme in wireless sensor networks

A compromised node can generate a fabricated report, which results in false alarms, information loss, and a waste of precious network energy. An interleaved hop-by-hop authentication (IHA) scheme has been proposed to minimize such serious damage by detecting and filtering false reports at the very early en-route nodes. Unfortunately, IHA, with a single path from the source to the BS, cannot keep its security goal if more than t intermediate nodes are compromised. In this paper, an enhanced multi-path interleaved hop-by-hop authentication (MIHA) scheme is proposed. MIHA sets up disjoint and braided paths and switches to alternate paths when there is more than t compromised nodes on the current path to continue dealing with en-route insider attacks. A new key assignment mechanism was also applied to enhance network security and to reduce key storage overhead. Through analysis and simulations, MIHA exhibits improved resilience to en-route insider attacks and filters more bogus reports at early hops than IHA. Specially, with an attack frequency of 1/15 and a false traffic rate of more than 60%, MIHA with three disjoint paths can filter over 27% of false reports and is more energy efficient when compared to IHA.