Trust and Location-Aware Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents the trust and location-aware routing (TLAR) protocol for cooperative location-aware routing in wireless sensor networks. The objective of the TLAR protocol is to offer dependable and lightweight location-aware routing solution for the resource constrained WSNs. TLAR protocol consists of two modules: (1) trust assessment and (2) routing. In the trust assessment module, nodes running the TLAR protocol calculate the consolidated trust values (CTVs) of its neighboring nodes by using direct and indirect observations. During CTVs calculation, unlike existing trust models, the proposed trust module dynamically adjusts weights associated with the trust metrics. On the other hand, in the routing module, the routing decisions are supported by CTVs and geographic routing principles. The performance of the TLAR protocol is validated through the network simulator ns-2 simulations. It is observed from the simulation results that the TLAR protocol is robust in detecting and isolating malicious nodes from the routing process.