Wireless sensor network denial of sleep attack

Abstract

With the progression of computer networks extending boundaries and joining distant locations, wireless sensor networks (WSN) emerge as the new frontier in developing opportunities to collect and process data from remote locations. Like IEEE 802.3 wired and IEEE 802.11 wireless networks, remote wireless sensor networks are vulnerable to malicious attacks. While wired and infrastructure-based wireless networks have mature intrusion detection systems and sophisticated firewalls to block these attacks, wireless sensor networks have only primitive defenses. WSNs rely on hardware simplicity to make sensor field deployments both affordable and long-lasting without any maintenance support. Energy-constrained sensor networks periodically place nodes to sleep in order to extend the network lifetime. Denying sleep effectively attacks each sensor node's critical energy resources and rapidly drains the network's lifetime. This paper analyzes the energy resource vulnerabilities of wireless sensor networks, models the network lifetimes of leading WSN medium access control (MAC) protocols, and proposes a new MAC protocol which mitigates many of the effects of denial of sleep attacks.