Enhanced Weighted Trust Evaluation Scheme for Detection of Malicious Nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) present myriad application opportunities for several applications areas such as precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, traffic control, industrial process monitoring and control, home automation and mission-critical applications such as military surveillance, healthcare applications, disaster relief and management, fire detection applications among others. Since WSNs are used in mission-critical tasks, security is an essential requirement. An adversary can easily compromise sensor nodes due to unique constraints inherent in WSNs such as limited sensor node energy, limited computational and communication capabilities and the hostile deployment environments. These WSNs unique challenges render existing traditional security schemes used in traditional networks inadequate and inefficient. An adversary may take control of some sensor nodes and use them to inject false data with the aim of misleading the network’s operator (Byzantine attack). It is therefore critical and crucial to detect and isolate malicious nodes so as to prevent attacks that can be launched from these