Secured Clustered Wireless Sensor Network Using Ensemble Hamming Code and Quadratic Residue and Nonresidue Properties

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are increasingly used in critical sectors such as defence, healthcare and environmental monitoring. These networks rely on small resource-constrained sensor nodes that communicate wirelessly, making them vulnerable to security threats. Although cryptographic methods, time synchronisation and error-correcting codes (ECCs) offer some protection, they often struggle with the computational and energy limitations of sensor nodes. Among ECCs, Hamming codes combined with quadratic residue (H-QR) techniques have shown promise in enhancing network security and improving performance metrics such as packet delivery ratio (PDR) and throughput (TP). However, existing H-QR implementations are limited in scalability, supporting only small networks with up to 15 nodes. To address this limitation, this study introduces an enhanced security architecture for clustered WSNs using Hamming codes with quadratic residue and nonresidue (H-QRN) properties. The proposed H-QRN scheme supports an arbitrary number of sensor nodes, making it suitable for large-scale and diverse industrial applications. Simulation results demonstrate that H-QRN significantly improves PDR and TP over traditional H-QR methods while maintaining similar end-to-end delay (E2E) and control overhead (CO). This work offers a scalable and efficient security solution for WSNs and provides practical insights for selecting security protocols tailored to specific application requirements.