Multi-hop Data Fragmentation in Unattended Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: In this work, we analyze the advantages of multi-hop data fragmentation in unattended wireless sensor networks (UWSN) and propose a lightweight protocol to achieve it. UWSN has recently become an important aspect in various areas of sensor networks where real-time data collection is difficult to manage. However, the characteristics of UWSN also poses new problems especially in data protection. For more efficient protection, data fragmentation has been proposed to fragment sensing data, which prevents attackers from successfully exploiting the data. However, there are currently minimal work on the strategies of the placement of fragments inside a sensor network. Through this work, we analyze the effects of multi-hop fragment dispersal in relation to effectiveness of data protection and energy consumption. Furthermore, we design a new routing algorithm suitable for the energy-efficient placement of data fragments in UWSN. We utilize simulation-based modeling and testbed implementation via FIT/IoT-Lab to prove the effectiveness of our work.