Malicious Node Detection in Wireless Weak-Link Sensor Networks Using Dynamic Trust Management

The application of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in extreme environments is becoming increasingly widespread. Within these extreme environments, communication links between WSN nodes become more fragile. We refer to such WSNs as Wireless Weak-link Sensor Networks (WWSNs). The characteristics of WWSNs make them more vulnerable to internal attacks. During the data transmission process from source nodes to destination nodes, intermediary nodes could act as malicious entities capable of intercepting or manipulating data. Therefore, detecting malicious nodes is of utmost importance. This paper proposes a malicious node detection strategy based on dynamic trust management to address these challenges. The dynamic trust management algorithm integrates type-2 fuzzy logic and considers various trust factors to comprehensively evaluate node trust within WWSNs. Additionally, a dynamic trust value updating mechanism is proposed to accommodate the dynamic environmental changes inherent to WWSNs. Experimental results emphasize the effectiveness of the proposed approach in dynamically adapting to the network environment while achieving a high level of performance in detecting malicious nodes.