Protecting Location Privacy against Traffic Analysis in Wireless Sensor Networks with LEACH Routing Protocol

Traffic analysis attacks are always adopted to threaten the safety of base station in a wireless sensor network (WSN) which uses LEACH routing protocol. Typical packet traffic in such a network may expose the pronounced patterns which would allow an adversary analyzing traffic to deduce the location of base station. The paper proposes two defending algorithms based on LEACH routing protocol to deal with these traffic analysis techniques and conceal the true traffic pattern. First, a Random Hot Spots Algorithm (RHSA) has been developed to randomly construct several communication areas with fake local high data to protect the base station of a WSN. Secondly, an Anonymous Communication Algorithm (ACA) is proposed to hide identities of all nodes that participate in the process of packet transmission by generating pseudonyms dynamically. Simulation results show that RHSA and ACA can effectively deceive and misdirect the adversary, and protect the location of a base station against attacks.