Applying the Byzantine Agreement in Wireless Sensor Networks based on clustering

Due to large communication overhead, applying Byzantine Agreement (BA) methods in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) degrades their lifetime dramatically. Most of traditional proposed BAs assume that the processors are connected to unlimited resources of energy and the ideal links exist between them. A rough estimation about the required number of exchanged messages for decision in a network with n nodes is O(n²). Therefore, inefficient energy consumption becomes more challenging as network grows. Without any further actions, applying a BA method on a typical WSN is infeasible. In this paper, we propose a method for large scale WSNs which reaches agreement through two levels. In this method, we reduce the energy consumption of network through dividing the whole network to small groups of nodes by appropriate heuristic Leader First (LF) clustering; leading to fewer number of communications in shorter ranges. Our proposed method prolongs network lifetime, as well as maintaining reliability and robustness in a favorable range.