Research On The Security Of Clustering Methods In Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) will have a wide variety of applications inthe future although facing two major problems. One problem is that the networks areusually very large in scale and that sensor nodes generally have constrainedresources and network communication may consume a huge amount of energy,resulting in a short life of the networks. The other problem is that sensor nodes arenormally deployed in unattended or unsafe areas, leading to a variety of securityrisks. To address the above two issues, on one hand, network protocols should beimproved to minimize the energy consumption of network data transmission and, onthe other hand, necessary mechanisms must be developed to provide effectivesecurity with acceptable energy consumption. Consequently, the design of anenergy-efficient security clustering method has not only the important theoreticalsignificance, but also the great application value.In this thesis, a secure clustering method is proposed to deal effectively withthe two major problems in WSNs. The proposed method consists of three novelparts: a multi-level network clustering algorithm based on the LEACH (Low EnergyAdaptive Clustering Hierarchy) protocol, an authentication mechanism formulti-level clustering network and a key management mechanism for multi-levelclustering networks. The LEACH-based protocol is able to help achieve high energyefficiency through dividing the networks into clusters and only making the clusterhead bear the high-energy communications and through balancing network energyload using a cluster head replacement mechanism and is, therefore, more suitable forlarge-scale networks to further improve the energy efficiency of the whole network.The authentication mechanism for the multi-level clustering network can effectivelyprovide mutual authentication for related nodes in the networks with the base stationas the trusted third party. The key management mechanism can effectively isolatethe nodes that fail to pass authentication, thus guaranteeing the security of datatransmission between legitimate nodes. The three parts work together smoothly andthrough mutual cooperation achieve the purpose of establishing secured clusters.Experiments show that the proposed secure clustering method not only can effectively reduce energy consumption of data transmission and improve the life ofthe network by60%compared to the LEACH protocol, but also can make thenetwork resist various attacks such as data tampering attacks, replay attacks, witchattacks, routing spoofing, etc.