Secure and energy efficient geocast protocol for sensor networks

Abstract

Geocast sends packets to all sensor nodes within a specified geographical region in order to gather data from sensor nodes in that region and is an important mechanism in sensor networks. In this paper we first introduce a new geocast protocol. The proposed protocol builds a multicast tree connecting geocast nodes using an energy efficient broadcasting technique without making any restrictions on the shape of the geocast region. The proposed protocol reduces the energy consumption during the phase of sending commands to the sensor nodes in a geocast region and also facilitates in-network data aggregation and, therefore, saves energy during the phase of reporting sensor data. Then we explain how this protocol is modified to protect commands and data from passive and active security attacks.