Secure Routing Protocols for Source Node Privacy Protection in Multi-Hop Communication Wireless Networks

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.