Cross layer approach for detection and prevention of Sinkhole Attack using a mobile agent

Wireless Sensor Network has emerged as a promising area of research for monitoring and performing different applications of the physical world. They employ self organizing networks of battery powered wireless sensors that can sense, process and communicate with the neighboring nodes. Designing of WSNs should consider energy optimization as the sensor nodes are battery powered and replacement of the battery when it is damaged is not practically feasible. To optimize energy, cluster based network allocations are used. LEACH is a routing protocol which is used in clustering techniques. Since multihop communications are in WSNs there is a dependency of different layers of OSI architecture. By combining the features of different layers, the accuracy of the network can be improved and hence cross layer approaches are being introduced. As WSNs are mainly employed in a wide range of support in military and civilian applications, they are under threat of attacks. The vulnerability increases due to the many to one nature of the network. The most destructive attacks happen in network layer and one such attack is Sinkhole Attack. This paper discusses about a cross layer approach for the detection of Sinkhole attack and prevention by using a mobile agent and analyzing how better the performance from the traditional approaches.