Abstract—Mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) are wireless networks of small sensors moving around in a specified coverage area, conveying their readings and data to static or mobile base stations. In contrast to a static wireless sensor network where the fixed node position can be used to authenticate a sensor node, the changing position of a node in a MWSN cannot be used in the authentication process. This can lead to imposters posing as legitimate nodes anywhere in the network. An imposter can use the identity of a legitimate node to communicate within the network and eavesdrop on confidential communication or to send false information. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme which employs nonce-values and blackout-time mechanisms to detect imposters in the network. The proposed scheme employs a quarantining mechanism to quarantine the detected imposters, and a node-restoration mechanism to appropriately authenticate and restore quarantined nodes into the network.

Index Terms—Imposter detection, mobile sensor networks, wireless network security, wireless networks.

The authors are with the Department of Computer Engineering, Kuwait University, Kuwait (e-mail: dr_ebrahim@mac.com).

Cite:Ebrahim A. Alrashed and Mehmet Hakan Karaata, "Imposter Detection in Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks," International Journal of Computer and Communication Engineering vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 434-441, 2014.