Secure and efficient source location privacy-preserving scheme for wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we propose a novel scheme for efficiently and securely preserving source nodes´ location privacy. Our scheme uses efficient cryptographic operations to change the packets´ appearance at each hop to prevent packet correlation. It also creates a cloud with irregular shape of fake traffic to enable the real source node to send its data anonymously to a fake source node to send to the sink and to camouflage the real source node in the nodes creating the cloud. To reduce the energy cost, clouds are active only during data transmission and the intersection of clouds creates a larger merged cloud to reduce the number of fake packets and boost privacy preservation. Simulation and analytical results demonstrate that our scheme can provide stronger privacy preservation than routing-based schemes and requires much less energy cost than global-adversary-based schemes.