Malicious Link Detection in Multi-Hop Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper considers malicious link detection in multi-hop wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Existing work on malicious link detection generally requires that the detection process being performed at the intermediate nodes, leading to considerable overhead in system design, as well as unstable detection accuracy due to limited resources and the uncertainty in the loyalty of the intermediate nodes themselves. In this paper, we propose an efficient and robust malicious link detection scheme by exploiting the statistics of packet delivery rates only at the base station. More specifically, first, we present a secure packet transmission protocol to ensure that except the base station, any intermediate nodes on the route cannot access the contents and routing paths of the packets. Second, we design a malicious link detection algorithm that can effectively detect the irregular dropout at every hop (or link) along the routing path. We prove that the proposed algorithm has guaranteed false alarm rate and low miss detection rate. Simulation results are provided to validate the proposed approaches.