EMPIRE - Energy efficient trust-aware routing for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

The problem of providing energy efficient trust-aware routing arises due to easy exposure to insecure conditions and highly constrained nature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The reputation system-based solutions reported in the literature require the nodes to be in promiscuous mode to monitor continuously its environment to detect misbehaviour events which is considered to be a costly operation for WSN nodes due to their limited resources. In this chapter, a reputation system-based technique using efficient monitoring approach called Efficient Monitoring Procedure In Reputation System (EMPIRE) for trust-aware routing in WSNs is presented. EMPIRE provides a probabilistic distributed monitoring methodology that reduces the nodal monitoring activities, while keeping the performance of the system, from the behaviour and trust awareness perspective, at a desirable level. Simulation results of the reputation system show that reducing monitoring activities with EMPIRE does not have a significant impact on system performance in terms of security.