Secure and Efficient Cluster Head Election in a UAV-Aided Wireless Sensor Network

In a UAV-aided WSN (Wireless Sensor Network), a UAV makes data collection work energy-efficient and completed rapidly. In a UAV-aided WSN, CHs (Cluster Heads) take charge of a crucial role such as gathering data from members and delivering the gathered data to a UAV. Such an important and critical role of CHs makes attackers enthusiastic in turning their compromised nodes to CHs. In the general CH election framework, each node determines its CH role by itself, and this allows a compromised node to become a CH even if it is a disqualified node. This paper presents a UAV-aided CH election framework where a UAV gathers residual energy of nodes and delivers them to the sink, which elects new CHs or disqualified candidates and delivers the new CHs or the disqualified candidates to the network. As depicted in simulation results, the UAV-aided CH election framework significantly diminishes CH elections of compromised nodes and corrupted messages per second. In addition, the UAV-aided CH election framework hugely diminishes energy consumption of nodes, and extends both lifetime of nodes and network lifetime. An important future work item is to implement other CH election protocols under out CH election framework, and to compare them in terms of security and performance.