A Deep Learning Approach for Efficient Anomaly Detection in WSNs

Data reliability in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has a substantial influence on their smooth functioning and resource limitations. In a WSN, the data aggregated from clustered sensor nodes are forwarded to the base station for analysis. Anomaly Detection (AD) focuses on detecting outlier data to ensure consistency during data aggregation. As WSNs have critical resource limitations concerning energy consumption and sensor node lifetime, AD is supposed to provide data integrity with minimum energy consumption, which has been an active research problem. Hence, researchers are striving for methods to improve the accuracy of data handled with a concern on the constraints of WSNs. This paper introduces a Feed-forward Autoencoder Neural Network (FANN) model to detect abnormal instances with improved accuracy and reduced energy consumption. The proposed model also acts as a False Positive Reducer intending to reduce false alarms. It has been compared with the other dominant unsupervised algorithms over robustness and other significant metrics with real-time datasets. Relatively, our proposed model yields an improved accuracy with fewer false alarms thereby supporting a sustainable WSN.