Secure Deployment with Optimal Connectivity in Wireless Sensor Networks

Introduction

With an increase in the availability of low-cost and intelligent sensing devices owning the rich capabilities of computation, communication and sensing, the wireless sensor networks technology enters into the mainstream research area. Due to difference in the computation, communication or sensing capabilities, the research aspects in wireless sensor networks are about to reach new heights of innovation with the technology. Also, due to availability of these variations among the sensor nodes, new research challenges related to the algorithm design, nodes deployment and network topologies may rise. Irrespective of the topology or node deployment technique, one of the primary issue for the network is to manage the coverage and connectivity of the nodes in the network. To manage coverage and connectivity, the network lifetime plays a vital role. Again, the extension of network lifetime is a perilous issue. The network lifetime can be increased with focus on energy efficient algorithms. These algorithms are also of no use if the nodes get compromised or affected by physical destruction, however, no matters about the battery level of the nodes. A number of deployment techniques are available today. The deployment method for these techniques may depend upon the application and type of deployment area. A number of deployment techniques in the wireless sensor networks proposed by many researchers (Huang, 2003; Welsh, Myung, Gaynor & Moulton 2003; Mainwaring, Polastre, Szewczyk, & Culler 2002; Szewczy, Polastre, Mainwaring & Culler 2004 & EPA, 2011) can be used by making a proper feature based selection for different types of sensors in accordance with specific application like vehicle tracking, healthcare monitoring, habitat monitoring, military operations or domestic applications. On the other hand, the wireless sensor networks face major challenges when the sensor nodes are deployed in hostile environments, where the physical monitoring of network is not possible as well as the nodes are subject to the risk of capturing or illegal use by adversary. A general illustration of remote surveillance using wireless sensor networks in hostile area is shown in Figure 1. On keeping such type of scenarios and circumstances in the mind, with a focus on good network connectivity, a secured, fault tolerant and key revocation mechanism should be on the priority.

Figure 1.

General illustration of WSN for hostile environment

Most of the times, especially in hostile environment, it is undesirable to deploy the sensor nodes in the required areas, precisely. That’s why a random deployment technique is always desirable in such type of areas. The prime objective of such networks is to sense the data and collectively reporting of this data into information at fusion center. That is, in the absence of good coverage and connectivity approach, it is not possible to maintain a good connectivity among the nodes inside a network. A good connected network generally referred by k-coverage and k-connectivity (Wang, Xing, Zhang, Lu, Pless & Gill, 2003), as well as, it must have the capability to provide high degree of information with fault tolerance.

In this paper, a secured deployment technique with optimal connectivity is proposed. The proposed technique is capable to provide k-connectivity among the nodes with fault tolerance and secured connections ability.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In section 2, literature is reviewed where the primary focus is towards the key pre-distribution techniques and the methods of deployment. The proposed model to overcome the bottlenecks as examined during the review is discussed in the section 3 followed by the implementation part. In the next section 4, the proposed algorithm is discussed in detail. The outcomes of the simulated model are described within the section 5. And, finally the paper is concluded with a view about the future work in the section 6.