Statistical Wormhole Detection in Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose two mechanisms for wormhole detection in wireless sensor networks. The proposed mechanisms are based on hypothesis testing and they provide probabilistic results. The first mechanism, called the Neighbor Number Test (NNT), detects the increase in the number of the neighbors of the sensors, which is due to the new links created by the wormhole in the network. The second mechanism, called the All Distances Test (ADT), detects the decrease of the lengths of the shortest paths between all pairs of sensors, which is due to the shortcut links created by the wormhole in the network. Both mechanisms assume that the sensors send their neighbor list to the base station, and it is the base station that runs the algorithms on the network graph that is reconstructed from the received neighborhood information. We describe these mechanisms and investigate their performance by means of simulation.