Secure Geographic Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Many routing protocols have been designed and implemented for the ongoing and emerging technology of Wireless Sensor Networks. The main objective of these protocols is to overcome the limitations of sensor nodes and to prolong the network lifetime. Geographic Routing, which performs routing based on the geographic location of sensors, is proposed for large scale and highly dynamic sensor networks. Two of the best known of these protocols are GPSR (Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing) and GEAR (Geographic energy Aware Routing). In the former, the protocol makes routing decisions using the positions of the nodes and the destination of the packet. While in the later in addition to the distance and location metrics, the energy level of the nodes is considered. Since security is not considered in the design of these two protocols, they are both vulnerable to various types of attacks such as Sybil attack, Sinkhole attack, Selective forwarding and many others. The current research is aimed to achieve four main goals. The first, analyzing the functionality of the two protocols. The second, putting the protocols under similar attacks in order to examine the impact. The third, detecting attacks through statistical analysis of network behavior. Finally the fourth, securing the protocols through mitigation techniques such as multipath routing and reputation/trust-based systems.