Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor: a small, lightweight device which measures the environment of physical parameters such as temperature, pressure, relative humidity, Sensor Networks: are highly distributed networks of wireless sensor nodes, deployed in large numbers to monitor the environment or system. Sensor Node : consists of sensing, computing, communication, actuation, and power components.

Sensor networks VS ad hoc networks

y The number of nodes in a sensor network can be several orders of

magnitude higher than the nodes in an ad hoc network.

y Sensor nodes are densely deployed. y Sensor nodes are limited in power, computational capacities and memory. y Sensor nodes are prone to failures. y The topology of a sensor network changes frequently. y Sensor nodes mainly use broadcast, most ad hoc networks are based on p2p. y Sensor nodes may not have global ID.

Factors Influencing Sensor Network Design

y Fault tolerance y Scalability y Operating environment y Sensor network topology y Transmission media y Power consumption

Application Of Wireless Sensor Networks

y Environmental Data Collection y Security Monitoring y Node Tracking Scenarios y The military applications y The Medical Application y Home and Other Commercial Application

TYPES OF ATTACKS ON WSN

y In many applications, the data obtained by the sensing nodes needs to be

kept confidential and it has to be authentic y In the absence of security a false or malicious node could intercept private information, or could send false messages to nodes in the network. y The major attacks are:
Denial of Service (DOS), Worm hole attack, Sinkhole attack, Sybil attack, Selective Forwarding attack, Passive information gathering, Node capturing, False or malicious node, Hello flood attack

Denial of Service (DoS)

y The simplest DoS attack tries to exhaust the resources available to

the victim node, by sending extra unnecessary packets and thus prevents legitimate network users from accessing services or resources to which they are entitled y DoS attack is meant not only for the adversary's attempt to subvert, disrupt, or destroy a network, but also for any event that diminishes a network's capability to provide a service

The Sybil attack

y In this attack, a single node i.e. a malicious node will appear to be a set of

nodes and will send incorrect information to a node in the network. y Authentication and encryption techniques can prevent an outsider to launch a Sybil attack on the sensor network. However, an insider cannot be prevented from participating in the network, but he should only be able to do so using the identities of the nodes he has compromised.

Selective Forwarding attack

y It is a situation when certain nodes do not forward many of the messages

they receive. y The sensor networks depend on repeated forwarding by broadcast for messages to propagate throughout the network.

Sinkhole attacks
y In a sinkhole attack, the adversary's aim is to lure nearly all the traffic from

a particular area through a compromised node, creating a sinkhole with the adversary at the center y Sinkhole attacks typically work by making a compromised node look especially attractive to surrounding nodes with respect to the routing algorithm.

Passive Information Gathering

y An intruder with an appropriately powerful receiver and well designed

antenna can easily pick off the data stream. y Interception of the messages containing the physical locations of sensor nodes allows an attacker to locate the nodes and destroy them y Besides the locations of sensor nodes, an adversary can observe the application specific content of messages including message IDs, timestamps and other fields.

False or Malicious Node

y Most of the attacks against security in wireless sensor networks are caused

by the insertion of false information by the compromised nodes within the network

Sensor Network Architecture

Layered Architecture
y The sensor nodes, which are not

near enough to the base station, communicate over nodes of neighboring layers.
y Example UNPF: Unified network

protocol framework

Clustered Architecture
y Sensor nodes are organized in

clusters y Each cluster has a cluster-head, y Cluster formation must be an autonomous process. y Example: Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH)

Data Handling
Data dissemination is the process by which queries for data are routed in the sensor network Consists of a two-step process of interest propagation and data propagation First, the node that is interested in some events, like temperature or air humidity, broadcasts its interests to its neighbors periodically. Interests are then propagated through the whole sensor network In the second step, nodes that have requested data, send back data after receiving the request. Intermediate nodes in the sensor network also keep a cache of received interests and data.

Flooding
each node which receives a packet broadcasts it if the maximum hop-

count of the packet is not reached and the node is not the destination of the packet. y Advantages: easy to implement and maintenance y Disadvantages: Implosion (duplicate messages are sent to the same node), Overlap (overlapping regions of sensor coverage), Resource blindness (many redundant transmissions, reduced network lifetime)

Gossiping
y modified version of flooding, nodes do not broadcast a packet, but send it to

a randomly selected neighbor. y Advantages: easy to implement and maintenance, lower overhead than flooding y Disadvantages: need a long time for a message to propagate throughout the network, does not guarantee that all nodes will receive the message!

Sensor Protocols For Information via Negotiation( SPIN)

SPIN uses three types of messages: ADV, REQ, and DATA The sensor node that has collected some data sends an ADV message

containing meta-data describing the actual data.

If some of node's neighbors is interested in the data, the neighbor sends a

REQ message back.

After receiving the REQ message, the sensor node sends the actual DATA.

The neighbor also sends ADV message forward to its neighbors, thus data is disseminated through the network

Cost Field Approach

Considers the problem of setting up paths to a sink y Two-phase process:

The first phase set up the cost field at all sensor nodes (based on metrics such as delay,) The second phase uses the cost for data dissemination The cost at each node is the minimum cost from the node to the sink, which occurs on the optimal path.

Geographic Hash Table(GHT)

y Inspired by Internet-scale

distributed hash table (DHT) y stores a pair (key, value) y The data is stored distributed across all sensors not routed to a central storage. y More effective in large sensor networks where a large number of events are detected but not all are queried.

Data gathering model

y Data gathering algorithms try to maximize

the number of rounds of communication before the nodes die and the network becomes inoperable. y Conflicting requirements: Minimum delay and minimum energy consumption

Direct Transmission

y Every node sends the collected data

directly to the base station. y high energy consumption, and delays

Power Efficient Gathering for Sensor Information System

y PEGASIS aims to minimize the transmission

distances over the whole sensor network, minimize the broadcast overhead, minimize the amount of messages that are sent to the base station y In PEGASIS a chain of sensor nodes is constructed using a greedy algorithm starting from the node farthest from the base station. y During the data transmission, nodes aggregate the data and only one message is forwarded to the next node. y The node that is selected as a leader then transmits all the data to the base station in a single message.

Binary Scheme
Also chain based algorithm like PEGASIS which classifies nodes into different levels. Levels: all nodes which receive a message rise to the next level. The number of nodes is halved from a level to the next. y An example of the binary scheme is shown in Figure below. Nodes s1, s3, s5 and s7 receive messages on the first level and thus they y rise to the next level. On the second level nodes s3 and s7 receive messages and finally node s7 forwards all data to the base station.