Source Anonymity in WSNs using Real/Fake packet Injections

Abstract

Many of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) applications such as tracking and monitoring endangered species, and/or military applications in areas of interest require anonymity of the origin known as Source Location Privacy (SLP). The aim is to prevent unauthorized observers from tracing the source of a real event by analyzing the traffic on the network. Three different techniques: Dummy Uniform Distribution (DUD), Dummy Adaptive Distribution (DAD) and Controlled Dummy Adaptive Distribution (CAD) are introduced to overcome the anonymity problem against a global adversary (which has the capability of analyzing and monitoring the entire network). Our proposed techniques confuse the adversary about the existence of the real event by introducing low rate fake messages, which subsequently lead to location and time privacy. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed techniques improve delivery ratio and reduce the delay and overhead of a real event's packets while keeping a high level of anonymity.