A Novel Trust-based Cooperative Node Selection Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

For communication between the cluster head node (CHN) and the distant data fusion center (DFC) with the cooperation of intra-cluster nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), reliable handling of packets by the cooperative node (CN) is difficult to ensure. In this paper, we propose a novel CN selection scheme based on trust for WSNs. This scheme can choose one of high trust nodes to assist in the transmission of CHN, which aims to improve the transmission performance over cooperative communication in the presence of potential malicious nodes. First, we establish a trust model to improve the reliability of transmission by CN in WSNs, which is based on both the direct trust and the indirect trust of nodes. Then the CHN selects a node based on the proposed trust model to aid the CHN in transmission. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can mitigate the impact of the potential malicious nodes on transmission performance and the simulation results also demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme.