Trust-based secure directed diffusion routing protocol in WSN

Deployed in the monitoring environment, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a measurement and control network composed of miniature and low-cost sensors with sensing, computing, and communication capabilities. The design of the Directed Diffusion (DD) routing protocol is one of the key problems in WSN. In order to obtain the confidentiality of sensing data and solve the unreliability of relay nodes in the existing DD routing protocols, this paper designs an Energy Trust Model (ETM) by introducing the remaining energy and trust of a node. We further propose a Trust-based Secure Directed Diffusion Routing protocol (TSDDR) based on the model. The proposed protocol achieves the establishment of a credible communication path and the transmission of confidential data in WSN. Meanwhile, the balance of energy consumption and the privacy of sensing data can be ensured. The performance analysis results show that the TSDDR protocol can effectively defeat against MITM attacks and prevent the malicious nodes’ impersonation. At the same time, the protocol achieves secure end-to-end anonymous communication with acceptable energy overhead and computational complexity.