Secure Packet Transfer in Wireless Sensor Networks – A Trust-based Approach

Trust is very important in wireless sensor networks to transfer the data from source to destination. The Dynamic Source Protocol calculates the alternate path, if any node fails to transfer the data. The Dynamic Source Protocol does not have any built-in functionality to calculate an alternate path if the path has a malicious node. With the expense of an intruder detection system we can detect the malicious node and alter the data/packet transfer path. However, intruder detection system is very expensive for wireless sensor networks and there is no guarantee in detecting a malicious node. In the current research a trustbased approach is recommended to minimize the overheads of intruder detection system and it also detects the abnormal behavior nodes. The proposed model uses the repeated games to detect faulty nodes through the cooperative effort in the sensor network and further judges the trust of successive nodes. Simulations were presented for normalized payoff of packet dropping, average discount payoff, and trust relation. Keywords-wireless sensor networks; repeated games; packet transfer; trust-based approach; secure transferof data.