A Secure and Efficient Routing Protocol for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

A secure and efficient routing protocol for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks is proposed to deal with some issues in the LEACH arithmetic. The wireless sensor networks have some sensor nodes that have greater power and transmission capability than other nodes have. Both ordinary nodes and heterogeneous nodes are distributed respectively in a sensing area that is divided into a number of same equilateral hexagons. Each hexagon has one heterogeneous node. Heterogeneous nodes act as the cluster heads and ordinary nodes act as those cluster sensors in all clusters. The pairwise keys between nodes are established through utilizing the concept of the overlap key sharing and the random key predistribution scheme. Moreover, all ordinary nodes send their messages to their cluster heads after authenticating those messages. The data are sent to the base station in a manner of multi-jumping along a routing path consisting of cluster heads. The arithmetic balances energy expense among all kinds of nodes, saves the node energy, and prolongs the life of wireless sensor networks. Additionally, Analysis demonstrates that the connectivity and security of wireless sensor networks have been improved obviously with some heterogeneous nodes.