WSN Routing Protocols: Anonymity Prospective Analysis

Abstract

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is mainly composed of multiple sensor nodes and a single Base-Station (BS), randomly distributed in a given area of interest. WSNs have proven very beneficial in various applications in unattended setup in many domains such as scientific, civil, and military. In these applications, sensors send their measurements to the Base Station over multi-hop wireless routes where the Base Station is responsible for collecting and processing the sensed data. Given the significant role of the BS, an adversary would try to uncover the base-station position by analyzing the traffic patterns in the network in order to apply targeted attacks that are geared for disrupting the network operation. In this paper, we analyze the traffic analysis attack models from an adversary’s point of view. Also, we evaluate different routing schemes in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses in terms of exposing the network to traffic analysis attacks. Our evaluation is supported by simulation results.