A trust enhanced secure clustering framework for wireless ad hoc networks

Secure clustering in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks is a very important issue. Traditional cryptographic solution is useless against threats from internal compromised nodes. In light of this, we propose a novel distributed secure trust aware clustering protocol that provides secure solution for data delivery. A trust model is proposed that computes the trust of a node using self and recommendation evidences of its one-hop neighbors. Therefore, it is lightweight in terms of computational and communication requirements, yet powerful in terms of flexibility in managing trust. In addition, the proposed clustering protocol organizes the network into one-hop disjoint clusters and elects the most qualified, trustworthy node as a Clusterhead. This election is done by an authenticated voting scheme using parallel multiple signatures. Analysis of the protocol shows that it is more efficient and secure compared to similar existing schemes. Simulation results show that proposed protocol outperforms the popular ECS, CBRP and CBTRP in terms of throughput and packet delivery ratio with a reasonable communication overhead and latency in presence of malicious nodes.