Energy efficient multipath data transfer scheme to mitigate false data injection attack in wireless sensor networks

•A solution to false data injection attack is addressed in this paper.•In the proposed scheme two disjoint paths are used for key sharing and data sharing.•En-route nodes check the authenticity of the packets before forwarding.•Use of alternate path enhance the data delivery rate in the proposed scheme.

Wireless sensor networks are networked systems that are deployed in an application specific region to sense the events of interest. The sensed event information has to be reported to the base station. When the event report is transmitted, adversaries can inject false event messages through compromised nodes on the path of data transfer. Falsified event messages when forwarded through en-route nodes lead to wastage of their limited energy. This study proposes a energy efficient multipath data transfer scheme to address the troubles caused by false data injection attack. This can be done by early detection and filtering of injected false data. Moreover, the multipath data transfer technique prevents the direct access of event information by a compromised en-route node. Simulations show that the proposed scheme could significantly improve the performance of false data filtering process without losing resiliency against node compromisation and data compromisation.

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