Selection of Monitoring Nodes to Maximize Sensing Area in Behavior-based Attack Detection

In wireless sensor networks, sensors have capabilities of sensing and wireless communication, computing power and collect data such as sound, movement, vibration. Sensors need to communicate wirelessly to send their sensing data to other sensors or the base station and so they are vulnerable to many attacks like garbage packet injection that cannot be prevented by using traditional cryptographic mechanisms. To defend against such attacks, a behavior-based attack detection is used in which some specialized monitoring nodes overhear the communications of their neighbors(normal nodes) to detect illegitimate behaviors. It is desirable that the total sensing area of normal nodes covered by monitoring nodes is as large as possible. The previous researches have focused on selecting the monitoring nodes so as to maximize the number of normal nodes(node coverage), which does not guarantee that the area sensed by the selected normal nodes is maximized. In this study, we have developed an algorithm for selecting the monitoring nodes needed to cover the maximum sensing area. We also have compared experimentally the covered sensing areas computed by our algorithm and the node coverage algorithm.