Asian Research Thesis Index

Abstract

Wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of a large number of sensor nodes with data collecting,
processing and communication capabilities. Its primary objectives are how to exchange
information securely to achieve authenticity, integrity and availability of data in an efficient
manner. These networks are easily compromised by different attacks, i.e. Jamming attacks,
Denial of service attacks (DoS), Sybil attacks, tampering attacks, and Black hole attacks. Black
hole attacks are one of the most lured attacks that are used to highjack the security, functionality
and performance of the WSNs. Ad hoc on demand distance vector (AODV) and Enhanced ad hoc
on demand distance vector (E-AODV) protocols were proposed to resolve this issue. However, a
tightly coupled issue associated with these approaches is their inconsistency to block an intruder
node, i.e. every node doesn?t know anything about an intruder node until this information is
shared by the concerned destination node. Moreover, communication process with the concerned
destination node is an energy harvesting and time consuming process. Therefore, an energy
efficient and secure routing protocol is needed to resolve the aforementioned issue i.e., black hole
attack. In this research, a secure and lightweight routing protocol is proposed to prevent black
hole attacks in constraint oriented networks i.e. WSNs, IoT and ad hoc networks. The proposed
scheme is a hybrid of media access control (MAC) and Ad hoc on demand distance vector
(AODV) protocols. Initially, every node is registered with nearest gateway/Cluster Head module
through the MAC addressing scheme and only registered nodes are allowed to communicate.
Registration process is useful in solving black hole attacks in WSNs i.e. due to communication
restriction, intruder node(s) cannot interact either with gateway/CH or registered nodes. If
somehow an adversary is able to send a message to the controller, it is not entertained or simply
neglected by gateway/CH module. Simulation tool OMNeT++ was used to verify the
authenticity, performance and security of the proposed scheme against field proven techniques
such as AODV and EAODV.The simulation results of the proposed scheme were compared with
the said techniques on the basis of key parameters such as latency, packet lost ratio and end to end
delay.

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