Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are deployed in sensitive applications, such as in military and asset monitoring. In these applications, it is important to ensure good source location privacy. This is owing to the open nature of WSNs and the easiness of an adversary to eavesdrop on sensor communication and back trace the location of the source node. This paper proposes a scheme to preserve the source location privacy based on random routing techniques. To achieve high privacy, packets are randomly routed from the source to the sink node through strategically positioned mediate or diversion nodes. The random selection of mediate or diversion nodes is location-based. Depending on the location of the source node, packets are forwarded through different regions of the network. The proposed scheme guarantees that successive packets are routed through very different routing paths and adversaries find it confusing to back trace them to the source node location. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme effectively confuses the adversary and provides higher source location privacy to outperform other routing-based source location privacy schemes.

Achieving high source location privacy is critical when Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used in sensitive applications such as in asset or battlefield monitoring. Due to the sensitivity of information in these applications, it is important to ensure the flow of data between sensor nodes is secure and it does not expose any information about the monitored assets to an adversary. This paper proposes a routing scheme with stronger source location privacy than the privacy of traditional routing schemes. The paper addresses some limitations of four existing schemes by providing highly random routing paths between the source nodes and sink node. The scheme randomly sends packet to the sink node through tactically positioned proxy nodes to guarantee the routes are highly befuddling to the adversary. To achieve high privacy, the proposed scheme uses a randomizing factor to generate a new random route for every successive packet. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides longer safety period and stronger privacy to outperform other schemes. Furthermore the scheme provides stronger privacy against both, patient and cautious adversary models.

Traffic analysis attacks are common in monitoring wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In the attacks, adversaries analyze the traffic pattern to obtain critical information such as the location information of a source node. Fake source packet routing protocols are often used to ensure source location privacy (SLP) protection. The protocols rely on broadcasting fake packets from fake sources concurrently with the transmission of real packets from the real source nodes to obfuscate the adversaries. However, fake source packet routing protocols have demonstrated some performance limitations including high energy consumption, low packet delivery ratio (PDR), and long end-to-end delay (EED). In this study, two existing fake source packet routing protocols are considered. Then two new phantom-based SLP routing protocols are proposed to address the limitations. Each proposed protocol introduces a two-level phantom routing strategy to ensure two adversary confusion phases. When the adversaries perform traffic analysis attacks on the packet routes, they encounter two levels of obfuscation. Simulation results establish that the proposed protocols have superior performance features. The protocols guarantee strong SLP protection throughout the WSN domain with controlled energy consumption, PDR, and EED. Furthermore, the proposed protocols achieve more practical results under varied network configurations.

Sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are usually battery-operated and resourceconstrained. The sensor nodes are often deployed in remote areas where the batteries cannot easily be recharged or replaced. Consequently, power becomes a limited resource in WSNs. Thus, energy consumption of the sensor nodes is among parameters of paramount importance. Subsequently, source location privacy (SLP) routing schemes must be energy-efficient and overall cost-effective. Angle-based routing schemes can cost-effectively protect the SLP. The goal of this study is to propose a new path node offset angle routing algorithm to improve the packet transmission cost of two existing SLP routing schemes. The proposed algorithm considers path node offset angles, arbitrary factors, and contrived regions to compute relatively short but greatly randomized routing paths. The routes offer a reduced number of packet forwarding events in the near-sink region and eventually diminish the packet transmission cost. Performance analysis results verify that the proposed path node offset angle routing algorithm effectively improves the packet transmission cost of the schemes and guarantees strong SLP protection throughout the WSN domain. Furthermore, the routing algorithm is capable of alleviating the energy-hole problem. INDEX TERMSSource location privacy, wireless sensor network, offset angle, safety period, energy consumption, packet transmission cost. LILIAN C. MUTALEMWA received the B.Eng. degree in telecommunications engineering from the

In many Internet of Things (IoT) systems and monitoring wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensor nodes are expected to function for prolonged periods of time with no scope of recharging the sensor node batteries. Similarly, in safety-critical monitoring applications, the WSNs are expected to guarantee effective source location privacy (SLP) protection throughout the network lifetime. Fake packet-based SLP protocols are often energy-inefficient, they incur short network lifetime, and have high probability of packet collision events. Therefore, it is important to evaluate features such as the capability of the protocols to guarantee effective SLP protection for prolonged periods of time and reliable packet delivery. The existing studies show some deficit in the performance evaluation of the protocols. Consequently, this paper presents some investigations on the performance of the fake packet-based SLP protocols. Comprehensive performance analysis of four existing protocols is done under varied network parameters and configurations. Performance is observed under varied sensor node residual energy, source-sink distance, lifetime, source packet rate, network size, and node density. Analysis results establish that the protocols are capable of achieving high levels of SLP protection. However, the privacy protection is short-lived. Furthermore, the results show that long source-sink distance, long fake packet routes, short distance between fake packet sources and phantom nodes, and large amounts of fake packet traffic can improve the SLP protection while diminishing the packet delivery reliability, energy efficiency, and the network lifetime. The results also show that when the source packet rate is increased it influences some negative effects on the performance of the protocols. Moreover, it is observed that integrating fake packet routing and packet flooding techniques can impact some positive effects on the SLP protection and negative effects on the network lifetime. Based on the observations and analysis results, some recommendations are presented to improve the performance of the protocols. INDEX TERMS Source location privacy protection, wireless sensor network, routing protocol, fake packet routing, packet delivery reliability. LILIAN C. MUTALEMWA received the B.Eng. degree in telecommunications engineering from the