TRAST: Trust-Based Distributed Topology Management for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

A distributed topology management scheme in wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) ensures coverage of an event, prolongs network lifetime, and maintains connectivity between camera sensor (CS) nodes. However, the deployment of WMSNs in unattended environments makes the nodes vulnerable to security attacks. Hence, security issues should be considered, along with topology management, in WMSNs. In this work, we propose a trust-based distributed topology management scheme, named TRAST, for use in WMSNs. TRASTexploits the received signal strength of the control packets, which are then used to construct the distributed topology. In a non-secure distributed topology, the use of trust helps in providing coverage of an event, and maintaining connectivity, even in the presence of malicious attacks. The proposed topology management scheme achieves higher average coverage ratio and average packet delivery ratio than those corresponding to the LDTS and T-Must schemes, in the presence of malicious attacks.