Issues and Challenges of Wormhole Attack Detection for Secure Localization in WSNs

Abstract

The field sensed data always requires to have location of the sensors for approximating the place of events in a field of observation. However, localization is a well-established research problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Further, considering a network under ideal conditions free from all network snags, for the localization, is an erratic postulate. Therefore, localization should consider some common network snags like wormhole attack. Though wormhole attack is comparatively easy to implement yet it has a devastating effect on localization. There are a few algorithms to address the wormhole attack detection in the literature. Some of the recent time wormhole attack detection algorithms are studied here. The study categorizes the existing algorithms based on various attributes. The analysis of the existing algorithms is comprehended with the future issues and challenges in wormhole attack detection. Further, the study reveals that most of the existing algorithms get affected by varying network traffic, increased computation and communication efforts, additional hardware cost, distance among the sensors, and mobility rate. In this manner, it is established that the secure localization requires detection of wormhole attack before localizing sensors where sensors should not get distressed due to wormhole attack detection.