Secure and Energy Aware Routing (SEAR) in Wireless Sensor Networks

Lifetime optimization and security are two important design issues for multi-hop wireless sensor networks with non-replenishable energy resources. In this research, we propose a novel secure and energy aware (SEAR) routing protocol to address these two issues concurrently through balanced energy consumption and probabilistic random walking. SEAR is designed with two configurable parameters, energy balance control (EBC) and security level. EBC is used to enforce energy balance and increase the lifetime. Security level is designed to determine the probabilistic distribution of the random walking that provides routing security. The security level can be defined by the message source on a message level, or on a system level. Theoretical analysis and OPNET simulation results show that the proposed SEAR can provide excellent balance between routing efficiency and energy consumption while preventing routing traceback attacks.