A secure network coding-enabled approach for a confidential cluster-based routing in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) face some security issues when transmitting data to the base station as these networks involve resources scarcity that needs to be tackled in the routing protocols. More specifically, collected and distributed data are only profitable if their confidentiality is guaranteed. Lately, some approaches have used network coding properties to comply with confidentiality issues. This paper proposes a Secure Network Coding-enabled approach for a confidential cluster-based Routing (SNCR) protocol in wireless sensor networks. It aims to thwart eavesdropping attacks and minimize energy dissipation within a clustered network. Our scheme uses the transmission of a single digit instead of all encoding coefficients, which reduces the communication overheads in the network. Confidentiality investigations and protocol discussions show that SNCR provides a countermeasure to eavesdropping attacks and ensures a compromise between security and the energy efficiency of data transmission in a multi-hop routing scheme.