Time synchronization in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Time synchronization is basic requirements for various applications in wireless sensor network, e.g., event detection, speed estimating, environment monitoring, data aggregation, target tracking, scheduling and sensor nodes cooperation. Time synchronization is also helpful to save energy in WSN because it provides the possibility to set nodes into the sleeping mode. In wireless sensor networks all of above applications need that all sensor nodes have a common time reference. However, most existing time synchronization protocols are likely to deteriorate or even be destroyed when the WSNs attack by malicious intruders. The recently developed maximum and minimum consensus based time synchronization protocol (MMTS) is a promising alternative as it does not depend on any reference node or network topology. But MMTS is vulnerable to message manipulation attacks. In this thesis, we focus on how to defend the MMTS protocol in wireless sensor networks under message manipulation attacks. We investigate the impact of message manipulation attacks over MMTS. Then, a Secured Maximum and Minimum Consensus based Time Synchronization (SMMTS) protocol is proposed to detect and invalidate message manipulation attacks.