Heterogeneous Cluster-Based Information-Centric Sensor Networks With User Security Satisfaction

In heterogeneous cluster-based information-centric wireless sensor networks (ICWSNs), sensor nodes acquire different application-specific data. They are clustered based on proximity, where cluster heads (CHs) act as cache nodes. Meanwhile, grouping sensor nodes based on the information type gathered can improve the ICWSN performance. Motivated by the heterogeneous nature of ICWSNs, application-specific communities can be formed within each cluster, where community leaders (CLs) can be selected to cache application-specific data. In this case, CHs gather aggregated data from CLs rather than basic sensing nodes. However, this creates an issue of the energy–latency and security tradeoff and affects user security satisfaction. In this work, we propose solving this issue by studying cluster-based ICWSNs with heterogeneous communities and comparing them to conventional heterogeneous cluster-based ICWSNs. Based on the formulated analytical model, we then propose SLAC-H, a security-level-aware CHs’ and CLs’ selection algorithm for cluster-based ICWSNs with heterogeneous communities. SLAC-H addresses the energy–latency and security issue by optimizing energy and coverage supported by sensor nodes in a cluster-based ICWSN with heterogeneous communities subject to security constraints. Simulation results show that compared to existing works, SLAC-H achieves lower latency and energy consumption while fulfilling higher user security satisfaction.