E-TSRP: An Efficient Trust-based Secure Routing Protocol for Energy-Constrained WSNs

Due to unexpected (selfish) behavior and the dynamic nature of sensor nodes in the wireless sensor network, reliable and consistent data delivery has become a challenging as well as exigent task in sensor networks. Trust-based security schemes have been proved better than traditional cryptographic (authentication) schemes in terms of reduced cost, minimal overhead as well as a large number of selfish node detection. This paper presents a hybrid (centralized and distributed) trust model, which incorporates a multi-factor (trustworthiness of sensor nodes, residual energy, and hop count) routing strategy to determine the shortest as well as trusted routing path. This multi-factor strategy helps in selecting trusted nodes to forward data and minimize energy consumption due to shorter routing paths. The experimental outcome demonstrates the excellent performance of the proposed model (E-TSRP) in terms of robust trust score and average path length.