Building a Trust-Aware Dynamic Routing Solution for Wireless Sensor Networks

To fully achieve the performance goal of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), sensor nodes need to cooperate in data collection and routing. However, sensor nodes are faced with a variety of risks due to the harsh operation environments. For example, nodes may misbehave by agreeing to forward packets, but failing to do it later, since they are selfish, malicious, or broken. The current routing protocols either have no security consideration at all based on the fundamental assumption that the sensor nodes will cooperate and not cheat, or focus on the efficient use of cryptographic mechanisms to authenticate routing packets. We argue that the conventional view of security based on cryptography and authentication alone is not sufficient to provide a complete solution for developing trustworthy sensor networks, due to the unique characteristics and novel misbehaviors encountered in WSNs. In this proposal Intelligent Automation Inc. (IAI) proposes a Trust-Aware dynamic Routing Framework (TARF) for WSNs. The proposed solution will work as a complementary to the cryptography based approaches. Our intent is to incorporate theories of trust from social networks into sensor networks in order to provide a reliable and trustworthy routing path in the dynamic WSN environment with both system and environmental uncertainties. BENEFIT: First, the proposed TARF solution has tremendous applications potential in dynamic military applications. Given the GIG vision, such heterogeneous and dynamic wireless sensor networks will be common and therefore secure, robust, efficient and reliable routing solution is necessary. The proposed Trust-Aware Routing architecture, algorithms, and the developed simulation tool can be applied to various military networks for major programs like surveillance network, Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, Future Combat System (FCS), etc. IAI has teamed with Honeywell on the FCS-Platform Soldier Mission Readiness System and with Northrop Grumman on FCS-logistic decision support system. We will leverage these relationships to identify the end military customer, and work with these teams to transition our Phase II technology into the FCS and other programs. In addition, our industry partner, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Telcordia can also transition these technologies. The market for military applications is quite large. Second, due to the increasing popularity of various wireless technologies, our proposed solution can be applied into a large number of commercial applications, such as wireless sensor networks, wireless ad hoc networks, wireless mesh networks, disaster networks, and border monitoring networks. The size of the market is quite large and may grow rapidly with the commercial demand in network reliability and availability. We expect that the aggregate market size will be similar to or larger than that of military applications.