A comparative analysis of node replica detection schemes in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are exposed to various kinds of security threat. The node replication attack is application-independent and can be launched by an adversary just by capturing a single sensor from the network. The post-capture impact of this attack is serious as an adversary can launch various insider attacks with the help of replicas that are deployed in the network. Counter-measures for node replication attack have drawn the attention of many researchers in this field. The first step towards handling a node replication attack is to detect the existence of replicas and remove them from the network. A number of replica detection schemes have been proposed in the literature. However, only a few survey articles exist based on replica detection schemes. Most of these survey lacks comparative analysis on the existing schemes, and are limited only to a few referred schemes. In this paper, we have classified the existing replica detection schemes considering a higher number of parameters than the existing schemes, and highlighted advantages and disadvantages of the contributions. A detailed comparative analysis of the existing schemes are made based on their communication cost, message overhead, storage requirement, and number of replica detectors per node. We have simulated a few mostly referred detection schemes using Castalia and analysed their performance in terms of detection probability, average number of packets sent/received, detection time, and energy consumption.