VSCF: A Vote-based Secure Cluster Formation Scheme

In some industrial areas, wireless sensor network (WSN) is widely used. Hierarchical cluster-based architecture is a common type which has some extraordinary performance on energy-saving and special applications. However, because of its special character, two-level architecture, the cluster heads (CHs) easily become the targets of enemy. Although traditional secure approaches can provide some network security, they are not sufficient to solve the problems which the enemy nodes, which own the correct keys of networks, initial some inside attacks. Especially, if they successfully become the CHs, the whole network security will be threatened. In this paper, we propose a vote-based cluster formation scheme to choose the nodes, which own both highest credit and enough power, to be the CH candidates for the next round, thus reduce the probability of malicious nodes becoming the CHs and securely form the cluster.