Secure Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Beacons

We present a scheme, called SLMB, for secure sensor localization in WSNs in which we propose to use a mobile beacon node with the goal of reducing the overall energy consumption in sensor nodes during sensor localization. In the SLMB scheme, a mobile beacon node traverses through the network, collects information from unknown sensor nodes, figures out position relationship with these nodes, and sends the information to the base station where analysis and location calculation is carried out to relieve unknown sensor nodes from energy-consuming computation. The proposed SLMB scheme is also designed to resist wormhole attacks, and localization is developed based on a mathematical model to design a path for the mobile beacon node to traverse in order to cover the entire sensor network. To evaluate our scheme, we have performed simulations to demonstrate that the SLMB scheme can improve the success rate and the accuracy of sensor localization compared to other sensor localization schemes in hostile environments. Our simulation results also show that the SLMB scheme consumes much less energy than traditional distributed sensor localization schemes, which is an important metric in measuring the effectiveness and usefulness of any schemes targeted for applications in WSNs.