A pareto survivor function based cluster head selection mechanism (PSFCHSM) to mitigate selfish nodes in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), co-operation among sensor nodes plays a significant role for reliable data delivery by prolonging the lifetime of the network. Taking this aspect into account, a Pareto Survivor Function based Cluster Head Selection Mechanism (PSFCHSM) is proposed for electing the new cluster head under selfish attack. In this approach, the detection of selfish attack is achieved through a conditional probabilistic approach which monitors events that purely depends only on the continuous network parameters. The proposed strategy not only identifies the selfish attack in sensor networks but also elects a new sensor node as a rehabilitative Cluster Head (CH) based on Pareto Survivor Function (PSF). The preeminence of the proposed approach is evaluated through evaluation parameters like Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Energy Consumption Rate and Throughput by varying the number of sensor nodes and the transmission range. Further, the incorporation of this conditional survivability co-efficient mechanism detects and mitigates selfish nodes at a rapid rate of 32 % than the benchmark mechanisms like Fuzzy Ant Colony Optimization Routing (FACOR) and Genetic Algorithm Inspired Routing Protocol (GROUP) considered for comparison. The proposed approach not only isolates the selfish nodes that causes Denial of Service (DoS) attack but also reduces the cost incurred in communication. Furthermore, the simulation results show that PSFCHSM outperforms GROUP and FACOR by enhancing the network lifetime by 28 %.