Distributed Audit Secure Data Aggregation for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Data aggregation can reduce the communication overhead and energy expenditure of sensor nodes, as well as extend the life-cycle of the wireless sensor network. However, because individual sensors may be compromised, the data aggregation also introduces some risks including the false data injection attacks. This paper proposes a distributed audit secure data aggregation protocol. The aggregates are audited at the next level nodes of the aggregators. The communication overload, which Base Station (BS) originates in the attest process, can be avoided. Furthermore, because we can find the false data in the lower level, it is easier to strike out the false data, and only a little fraction of readings are dropped off. To do these, the aggregators attach multi-certificates to the aggregates. Those certificates may include the maximum, minimum, mean reads and those nodes’ identifiers. To further reduce the communication overload, we use the watermark method to embed the multi-certificates in authentication part of aggregates. The length of message is kept as same as that under the normal hop-by-hop aggregation protocol with MACs. The analysis shows that our protocol is efficient and provides certain assurance on the trustworthiness of the aggregation result.