Fuzzy Based Trust Estimation for Congestion Control in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper we present a novel congestion control scheme based on fuzzy logic systems for a wireless sensor network (WSN). In sensor networks existence of malicious nodes is undeniable. These nodes aggravate congestion problem by diffusing useless packets. In our approach using in-network fuzzy based processing, each node monitors the behavior of its neighbor nodes estimating their related trust. Therefore, malicious nodes will be detected and isolated to reduce congestion rate contributed by relative packets. Results show our proposed scheme increases packet delivery of legitimate nodes up to 27.5% and reduces packet loss ratio up to 40% when 16% of all nodes are inferred as malicious.