Implementing a Trust-Aware Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Nodes

Wireless Sensor Networks are gaining popularity due to the fact that they offer low-cost solutions for a variety of application domains. However, these networks are highly susceptible to attacks, due to both the open and distributed nature of the network, as well as the limited resources of the nodes, which dictate the implementation of sophisticated security frameworks. Trust-aware routing is an important direction in designing secure routing protocols for WSN. The common approach to provide trust-aware routing is to implement an efficient mechanism to evaluate the trustworthiness of neighboring nodes, based on a proper set of trust metrics. In this paper, we discuss several challenges addressed during the implementation of a trust-aware management scheme on commercial sensor nodes, as well as problems faced during the deployment of the test-bed network. As it will be discussed, the limited memory, computational power, energy resources and radio bandwidth of sensor nodes deeply impact the implementation strategy, while additionally, the realities of radio propagation, such as lossy and asymmetric links, require careful evaluation of the routing selection metrics.