CENTER: A Centralized Trust-Based Efficient Routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we present CENTER, a CENtralized Trust-based Efficient Routing protocol for wireless sensor networks (WSN). CENTER is a secure and efficient routing protocol that utilizes the powerful sink base station (BS) to identify and ban different types of misbehaving nodes that may interrupt or abuse the functionality of the WSN. In CENTER, the BS periodically accumulates simple local observations of every node and deduces a detailed global view of the network. The BS calculates different quality metrics - namely the maliciousness, cooperation, and compatibility, approximates the battery life, and evaluates the Data Trust and Forwarding Trust values of each node. The BS then uses an effective technique to isolate all “bad” nodes, whether misbehaving or malicious, based on their history. Finally, the BS uses an efficient method to disseminate updated routing information, indicating the uplinks and the next hop downlink for every node. Through its centralized approach, CENTER provides more efficient and secure routing while accounting for the energy-constrained sensor nodes. We present simulation results of CENTER performed using TOSSIM to verify its correctness, security, and reliability.