Thesis Proposal
The project entails Wireless Sensor Networks
(WSN) implementation that includes the constraints,
security requirements, and attacks that the networks
are prone to
Philip Hogan
Student ID (20133359)
Supervisor
Project Overview
The project entails Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) implementation that includes the constraints,
security requirements, and attacks that the networks are prone to. We will further take a look at a
problem that we will formulate using this implementation of WSN. WSN is a self-arranging
network without any centralized control. The sensing devices are commonly identified as nodes.
These nodes are extremely small in size and quite inexpensive. Primarily, these networks were
merely installed in the military areas for monitoring the activities of conflicting sides. Every
movement of the enemy was monitored and then the system used this significant information for
taking suitable measures. In some applications, monitoring suspicious actions and movements is
extremely complicated because of the broad regions. Therefore, the exploitation of wireless sensor
networks is extremely useful in these kinds of applications.
In this project, we will start by taking a look at the WSN constraints that include power restraints,
memory limitations, unreliable communication, higher communication delay, and Unattended
operation of networks. These limitations are a result of WSN being generated with the help of
resource-controlled based sensor nodes mutually, even though these networks comprise restricted
processing ability and storage potential. In these networks, the bandwidth is provided according to
the available resources and these networks are experiencing various problems because of the
energy scarcity and mini-sensing devices. Within these networks, the execution of security
techniques is extremely difficult because of these restraints and thus several restraints of sensor
nodes should be considered for ensuring the development of traditional security algorithms
Secondly, we will have a look at the security requirements deemed necessary in implementing the
WSNs. These requirements include Data Confidentiality, Data Authentication, Data Integrity,
Data Freshness, Access Control, and Availability. The security of WSNs is extremely essential
and for this purpose, some necessities should be kept in mind. The sensor node needs several kinds
of surrounding resources inside it for ensuring the complete safety of extremely responsive
information. The performance keeps this network lively. A malicious node can easily trigger an
attack within these networks because of some susceptibilities and occasions. The clients can go
through huge losses because of these attacks.
Thirdly, we are going to take a look at the several attacks that the WSN are prone to that call for
the security requirements above. The attacks include physical layer attacks which can be a result
of congestion or tampering, link layer attacks which can be a result of collision or exhaustion, and
network layer attacks which can be a result of hello flood, wormhole, Sybil, or sinkhole attack,
transport layer attacks which can be as a result of flooding attack, and application layer attacks
that can be as a result of denial-of-service (DoS) or cloning attacks. There are also minimal attacks
that include energy drain attacks, data Integrity Attacks, sniffing attacks, and interference and
jamming. For WSNs, there is a dissimilarity as compared to other networks due to their extreme
exceptional features. The possibility of intrusions within these networks is high as well and the
susceptibility and receptiveness of these networks to other security threats are extremely high as
they comprise distributive information sharing. The triggering of intrusion is higher in these
networks because of their deployment in higher and more hazardous areas. Several intrusions may
occur at different layers of the network as all these layers perform in a dissimilar way and execute
dissimilar operations. In these networks, several routing protocols are involved which do not
comprise any security mechanism. Thus, the malicious can easily break the security of these
networks. In addition, we will take a look at the various scholarly views on WSN.
Finally, we will carry out an experiment based on how the WSN devices sense data and forward
the information to sink. The objective of our experiment is to isolate the attacker node, which is
responsible for the launching of sinkhole intrusion within the network, measure the threshold value
of data packets transferred on the wireless link and finally implement the proposed approach and
compare this approach with former techniques concerning several factors. We will be carrying out
network simulations to obtain experimental results and comparisons to other former techniques to
ascertain the efficiency of WSNs.