Malicious node detection in wireless sensor networks using weighted trust evaluation

Deployed in a hostile environment, individual nodes of a wireless sensor network (WSN) could be easily compromised by the adversary due to the constraints such as limited battery lifetime, memory space and computing capability. It is critical to detect and isolate the compromised nodes in order to avoid being misled by the falsified information injected by the adversary through compromised nodes. However, it is challenging to secure the flat topology networks efficiently because of the poor scalability and high communication overhead. On top of a hierarchical WSN architecture, in this paper we proposed a novel scheme based on weighted-trust evaluation to detect malicious nodes. The hierarchical network can reduce the communication overhead between sensor nodes by utilizing clustered topology. Through intensive simulation, we verified the correctness and efficiency of our detection scheme.