Fault-diagnosis and Decision Making Algorithm for Determining Faulty Nodes in Malicious and Dormant Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Ubiquitous sensing enabled by Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies cuts across many areas of modern day living. This offers the ability to measure, infer and understand environmental indicators, from delicate ecologies and natural resources to urban environments. WSNs are expected to be integrated into the Internet of Things (IoT), where sensor nodes join the Internet dynamically, and used to collaborate and accomplish their tasks. However, when an ultra large disaster occurs, communication networks would be severely disconnected by the damages of network nodes. The most important issues of fault-tolerance is the Fault Diagnosis Agreement (FDA) whose purpose is to make each fault-free node detect/locate a common set of faulty nodes. In this study, the FDA problem is solved by a fault diagnosis protocol using dormant and malicious failure characteristics on nodes in a WSN by collecting the accumulated messages. The proposed protocol cannot only reach an agreement from fault-free nodes but also detect and locate the faulty components in a fallible WSN. Moreover, the proposed protocol can also tolerate, detect and locate the maximum number of faulty components to make a WSN never die by minimum number of rounds of message exchanges.