Authentication of sensor network flooding based on neighborhood cooperation

Flooding-based information dissemination is an important communication activity in sensor networks. Security is a major concern in sensor network flooding; in particular, the authentication of sensor nodes is important because once a node is compromised, it can send fake message to the network. One solution to this problem is to set up a base station that manages the authentication of all the sensor nodes. We propose a new authentication method that is intended for use in the absence of a trusted base station. The proposed method, referred to as predistribution-and-local-collaboration-based Merkle tree authentication (PCMA), combines Merkle tree authentication with neighborhood collaboration. We analyze the effectiveness of PCMA in term of the probabilities of nodes being compromised and disabled by an attacker. We also estimate the additional computation and energy required for this scheme. Finally, we present simulation results to validate our analysis