Fang et al.

J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14

https://doi.org/10.1186/s13638-020-01884-1

RESEARCH Open Access

MSCR: multidimensional secure clustered

routing scheme in hierarchical wireless sensor
networks
Weidong Fang1,2 , Wuxiong Zhang1,2,6*, Wei Chen3, Jin Liu3,4, Yepeng Ni5 and Yinxuan Yang7

*Correspondence:
[email protected]. Abstract
ac.cn For hierarchical wireless sensor network (WSN), the clustered routing protocol can
1
Science and Technology
on Micro‑system effectively deal with large-scale application requirements, thereby, how to efficiently
Laboratory, Shanghai elect the secure cluster heads becomes very critical. Unfortunately, many current stud-
Institute of Micro‑system ies only focus on improving security while neglecting energy efficiency and transmis-
and Information
Technology, Chinese sion performance. In this paper, a lightweight trust management scheme (LTMS) is
Academy of Sciences, proposed based on binomial distribution for defending against the internal attacks.
Shanghai 201800, China Simultaneously, distance domain, energy domain, security domain and environ-
Full list of author information
is available at the end of the ment domain are considered and introduced to propose a multidimensional secure
article clustered routing (MSCR) scheme by using dynamic dimension weight in hierarchi-
cal WSNs. The simulation results show that LTMS can effectively prevent a malicious
node from being elected as a cluster head, and MSCR can achieve a balance between
security, transmission performance and energy efficiency under the requirements of
environmental applications.
Keywords: Internet of Things, Wireless sensor network, Security, Routing protocol,
Trust management scheme

1 Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technology that achieves the connection between things
via the Internet. With the rapid development of wireless communication, the wireless
sensors are becoming the important components of information collection in IoTs. By
using sensors, the devices’ operation status or environmental information connected to
them can be obtained. Moreover, these wireless sensor nodes are organized into a wire-
less sensor network (WSN) [1–3]. The sensed information is aggregated and transmitted
to the Internet via WSN, and finally, the connections between things are achieved. Cur-
rently, WSN can be applied in many fields [4–6], which involve environmental monitor-
ing, smart home, intelligent agriculture and industrial safety monitoring. Therefore, as
the important infrastructure, the WSN’s network performance directly determines the
operation quality of IoT.
In a hierarchical WSN [7–11], a sink node, that is, a cluster head (CH), is usually used
to aggregate the sensed information from cluster members, and the clustered routing

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Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 2 of 20

protocols are deployed to reduce network traffic and energy consumption. A typical
clustered routing protocol, called low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH)
protocol [12], was proposed to balance the network load and reduce the energy con-
sumption. However, in a hierarchical WSN, if a CH has the higher level, and its data
processing load become heavier, the failure of the higher-level CHs may cause the entire
network to be paralyzed. Thereby, the balancing load of a hierarchical WSN is a key issue
that determines overall network performance. At the same time, if a CH, especially a
high-level CH, is captured and compromised, it will impact on the information security
of the entire network.
The challenges of information security come mainly from the security attacks [13–
16]. In general, these security attacks are categorized into external attacks and internal
attacks for WSN. The former involves the probabilistic jamming attacks, the eavesdrop-
ping attacks, as well as the decoding attacks. The latter is launched by the compro-
mised node, and its attack behaviors include tampering, discarding, replaying, forging
and selective forwarding data packets. The external attacks can be defended against
by deploying encryption, authentication, digital watermarking and other traditional
security schemes. However, these security technologies cannot defend against internal
attacks. This is due to that the compromised nodes have hold the security algorithm
and keys. Furthermore, for the resource-constrained sensor nodes, the security algo-
rithms with high computational complexity are almost impossible to execute. Currently,
the information security in hierarchical WSNs is mainly improved to ensure the trans-
mission of sensed information in secure by lightweight encryption or authentication
schemes. However, due to unattended deployment of sensor nodes, there are no effective
schemes to prevent the capture and compromise of nodes. Thereby, the internal attacks
that are launched by those compromised nodes are inevitable. Simultaneously, once a
malicious node is elected as a CH, the authenticity and integrity of sensed information in
the entire cluster will not be guaranteed. Fortunately, some studies have shown that the
trust management scheme is an effective approach to defend against the internal attacks
[17, 18]. Moreover, we will adopt the trust value from the trust management scheme as a
key factor to elect a secure CH, and design a secure routing protocol.
In this context, to meet the requirements of network load balancing and security for
the clustered routing protocols, our contributions of this paper include the following:

1. Lightweight trust management scheme (LTMS): by using binomial distribution and

adopting CH’s recommendations, a novel trust management scheme with low com-
putational complexity is proposed to mitigate the typical internal attack, i.e., collu-
sion attack.
2. Multidimensional secure clustered routing (MSCR): based on the trust value from
LTMS, the environment domain, distance domain, energy domain and security
domain are introduced to design a secure routing scheme in hierarchical WSNs. It
can achieve a balance between energy efficiency, security and transmission perfor-
mance to prolong the network lifetime.

To compare our contributions with the previous works, the MATLAB is used to sim-
ulate and. As a well-known mathematical software, MATLAB is used in data analysis,
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 3 of 20

wireless communication, deep learning, image processing and computer vision, signal
processing, quantitative finance and risk management, robotics, control systems and
other fields. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: firstly, the related works on
trust management scheme and clustered routing protocols are reviewed and analyzed
in Sect. 2. Then, LTMS and MSCR are proposed in Sect. 3. Furthermore, the numerical
simulation and analysis are discussed in Sect. 4. Finally, the conclusions are drawn in
Sect. 5.

2 Related works
In this section, we will review the recently research on trust management and discuss
the secure routing protocols in hierarchical WSNs.

2.1 1.1. Trust management scheme

Existing trust management schemes that employ redemption schemes fail to discrimi-
nate between temporary errors and disguised malicious behaviors in which the attacker
cleverly behaves well and badly alternatively. Chae et al. presented the vulnerabilities
of existing redemption schemes, and described a new trust management and redemp-
tion scheme that could discriminate between temporary errors and disguised mali-
cious behaviors with a flexible design. This trust management scheme used a new kind
of trust, called predictability trust (PT), which was able to predict future trust values
based on past behaviors with an efficient and flexible design. They had shown the ana-
lytical results of the trust management scheme and demonstrated the advantages of the
proposed scheme with simulation conducted in a WSN. This scheme could provide effi-
cient, secure routing for WSNs [19]. The proposed scheme could defend against on–off
attack effectively. However, a dynamic sliding window for bad behaviors in this scheme
had no clear definition, and the applicability needed to be improved.
Unattended wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) were characterized by long periods of
disconnected operation and fixed or irregular intervals between sink visits. The absence
of an online trusted third party implied that existing WSN trust management schemes
were not applicable to UWSNs. Ren et al. [20] proposed a trust management scheme for
UWSNs to provide efficient and robust trust data storage and trust generation. For trust
data storage, they deployed a geographic hash table to identify storage nodes and to sig-
nificantly decrease storage cost. They used subjective logic-based consensus techniques
to mitigate trust fluctuations caused by environmental factors. They also exploited a set
of trust similarity functions to detect trust outliers and to sustain trust pollution attacks.
Through extensive analyses and simulations, the proposed scheme was efficient, robust
and scalable. Although the geographic hash table could significantly decrease storage
cost, the hash operation increased computational overhead.
Hussain et al. presented an energy efficient trust management model for securing life-
saving information with optimal power/energy consumption by sensor nodes. The pro-
posed model was a cluster-based three-tier architectures, where the first tier recorded
the first-run configuration of the nodes. The second tier secured the data between the
nodes, and the third tier ensured energy efficiency by calculating energy consumption
at every level and rotates cluster head among the nodes. The difficult task of energy effi-
ciency was achieved by the robust algorithm, which configured the nodes and trained
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 4 of 20

the network by using a machine learning technique. The simulation results showed
smooth functioning of the network with less energy consumption. The proposed scheme
performed better than anonymous authentication for wireless body area networks with
provable security (AAWBAN) in terms of computational overhead, energy consump-
tion, data drop rate and throughput [21]. As one of key research points, the robust algo-
rithm did not provide more explanation on energy consumption, which was generated
by configuring the nodes and training the network.
Labraoui et al. presented TMR, a risk-based trust management scheme in WSNs.
Compared with the previous schemes, TMR evaluated the overall trust value of a node
by the reputation value and the risk value, which was based on interaction-derived infor-
mation. The risk evaluation was a very helpful component to build the trust model, in
order to effectively deal with the conflicting behaviors of the nodes. Through relevant
simulation, they got a compelling argument showing the ability of TMR to detect the
on–off attack [22]. However, although the maximal value of interactions risk factor
between nodes was defined, there were no further explanations on this metric while it
acted an important role in direct trust evaluation.
Under the background of equal scale one-hop clustered WSN, according to the behav-
iors of the sensor nodes within the cluster on event perception, packet forwarding or
data fusion, Fang et al. proposed a reputation management scheme based on multi-fac-
tor, describing the initialization, update, storage of the reputation value and the punish-
ment and redemption of malicious nodes in detail. The sensor node’s reputation value,
based on multi-factor, was used to characterize the trustworthiness of sensor node in
this scheme. Due to the classification to trust factors constituting nodes’ reputation val-
ues, and the improvement of calculation methods to reputation values, the objectivity
and impartiality were enhanced during the assessment of nodes’ reputation values. To
verify the effectiveness of the proposed reputation management scheme in identifica-
tion of distrusted nodes, they applied the reputation management scheme to the existing
SPIN routing protocol to obtain a new trust enhanced routing protocol, called SFA [23].
The punishment and redemption for malicious nodes were the common trust decision
schemes. It directly determined how the compromise node was processed. In SFA, how
to punish and redeem those malicious nodes lacked further descriptions.
The information security is always a trending topic in WSNs. Even if the classic trust
management based on BETA distribution and its improved model proposed recently
might detect the internal attacks, it still lacks an effective defense mechanism to prevent
the on–off attack of malicious nodes. Hence, according to the Gaussian distribution,
Zhou et al. introduced the trust management system and the novel method included the
controlling factor to defend against the on–off attacks in WSNs. In Gaussian trust man-
agement scheme (GTS), the cost of on–off attacks was mitigated by using the controlling
factor, and the malicious nodes were detected. Through some preliminary simulation
results, this model was more stable to describe reputation against other distributions
and easier to display the trust directly and sensitively, and it also had the powerful ability
to prevent from on–off attacks [24]. The parameter—penalty, had no clear quantification
based on different scenarios.
Kowshalya and Valarmathi proposed a trust management scheme to facilitate trust-
worthy automatic decision making based on behaviors of objects. They used social
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 5 of 20

Internet of Things (SIoT) trust metrics, namely direct trust, centrality, community inter-
est, cooperativeness, service score, expected trust, overall trust and trust updates, to
compute trustworthiness among objects. The expected trust and periodic trust were
updated evidently to detect the selective forwarding attacks. They demonstrated the
advantages of the proposed scheme with other existing trust management schemes and
pointed out the other trust management schemes under study took a longer duration to
detect on–off attacks due to lack of expected trust [25]. There were larger computational
cost and communication overhead in proposed scheme.
Wu et al. proposed a beta and link quality indicator (LQI)-based trust model (BLTM)
for WSNs. When a direct trust is calculated, they considered communication trust,
energy trust and data trust. Then, the weights of these factors were discussed. At last,
they also proposed an LQI analysis mechanism is to maintain the accuracy and stability
of the trust value for normal nodes with poor-quality links. Compared with the beta-
based trust and reputation evaluation system (BTRES) [18], the simulation results had
shown that BLTM can defend against denial of service (DoS) attack and data tampering
attack, and the trust value of normal nodes can maintain stable and accurate [26]. Obvi-
ously, the link quality indicator was an important parameter in PHY. Not every low-cost
microcontroller unit (MCU) of sensor node could obtain this indicator.
Han et al. proposed a synergetic trust model based on support vector machine (SVM),
called STMS, to achieve accurate and robust trust evaluation for an underwater acoustic
sensor networks (UASNs). The STMS is made up of three parts. (1) Three kinds of trust
evidences are generated and refined by cluster members. (2) By using SVM technology,
a trust prediction model was trained to evaluate accurate trust value. (3) The scheme of
double cluster heads was designed to enhance network security and prolong the net-
work lifetime. Simulation results demonstrated that, in the aspect of detect accuracy of
malicious nodes, success rate of communication and network lifetime, STMS performed
better than other related works in the sparse deployment environment [27]. Consider-
ing the constrained resources of underwater acoustic sensor, the complexity of proposed
model needed to be evaluated.
In healthcare-oriented wireless sensor network (HWSN), it is also facing enormous
security challenges, especially from internal attacks. It is difficult to distinguish many
attack behaviors from interference in the complex healthcare scenarios, such as on–off
attack. Fang et al. proposed a binomial distribution-based trust management scheme
(BDTMS) for HWSN. The proposed method could rapidly detect and effectively defend
against on–off attacks and bad mouthing attacks. The trust value of the node was evalu-
ated. Simulation results showed that, compared with the time-window-based resilient
trust management scheme (TRTMS) [17], the proposed BDTMS achieved better per-
formance in defending against on–off attack under obstacle movement, especially with
higher detection accuracy [28]. In BDTMS, the speed of obstacles did not be considered.
As mentioned above, the deferent trust management schemes/models are designed to
meet different security requirements in WSNs. However, the energy consumption often
seems to be ignored, while this is very important for resources-constrained nodes. Cur-
rently, most existing trust management schemes are based on trust/reputation evalua-
tion. The application of trust management in wireless sensor networks is mainly aimed
at the following aspects: (1) against attacks in the network, (2) identifying malicious
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 6 of 20

nodes and detecting malicious behavior, (3) improving the security of data storage. The
scholars evaluate the proposed scheme through metrics such as accuracy, robustness,
energy consumption, throughput, calculation overhead and data loss rate. In conclusion,
the introduction of trust management provides higher security and higher efficiency for
wireless sensor networks.

2.2 1.1. Secure LEACH

Although LEACH protocol can improve energy efficiency, there was no any security
algorithm in this routing protocol. Subsequently, some improved LEACH protocols with
security were proposed.
The goal of the proposed secure data transmission for hierarchical WSNs was to guar-
antee a secure and efficient data transmission between leaf nodes and CHs, as well as
transmission between CHs and the base station (BS). In the proposed approach, the elec-
tion of new cluster heads was from the nodes with the highest remaining energy. Then,
the current cluster head informed the base station about the authenticity of the elected
cluster head. The message from the cluster head to the based station was encrypted by
MAC algorithm with the shared key between the base station and the cluster head. After
that, the BS broadcast the list of the authenticated cluster heads to all nodes using uTE-
SLA. After broadcasting the list of the authenticated cluster heads, nodes could initi-
ate a joint request to one of the cluster heads. By using NS-2.35, the simulation results
showed that, after improving LEACH protocol power consumption and adding the
security measures, the approach performed better in terms of the system throughput,
network lifetime, data transmitted and the total energy consumption. The proposed
approach provided a secure authentication solution for the network [29]. However, the
shared key was managed and updated would consume too much energy.
All the different key management schemes in WSNs, the deterministic key manage-
ment scheme with LEACH called DKS-LEACH was the scheme, which was used to
secure wireless sensor network in efficient manner and provided authentication, confi-
dentiality and integrity of sensed data. There were still some issues with DKS-LEACH
like energy consumption and resilience against node capture. Barad and Kadhiwala pro-
posed a DIST-LEACH scheme to improve the existing scheme to make it more resilient
using distance-based key management scheme. They had provided a performance analy-
sis of the proposed scheme, including energy consumption and resilience against com-
promised node. The results showed that even in case of compromised node attack the
proposed scheme provided better residual energy and better resilience [30]. The commu-
nication overhead on the key management needed to further analyze in DKS-LEACH.
The LEACH protocol lacked of security support. Patel and Jinwala proposed an
improvement of LEACH, called E-LEACH (end-to-end secure LEACH) which uses
homomorphic encryption to provide secure data aggregation in wireless sensor net-
works. Due to the algebraic characteristics in homomorphic encryption, the transmit-
ted data could be algebraically aggregated without decryption and hence require least
amount of energy, while ensuring privacy. E-LEACH provided data authentication,
data confidentiality and data integrity along with privacy, and also provided robustness
against node capture attack as keys were generated by seed value broadcasted by BS
and not remained persistent in memory. Hence, after reset of a node, an attacker would
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 7 of 20

not gain any seed-related information. E-LEACH was compared to LEACH in terms of
energy consumed [31]. However, the additional energy consumption due to encryption
did not be analyzed.
The nodes in WSNs had limited computational ability and limited energy. These device
constraints dictated the choice of various crypto primitives for the security model.
Kodali et al. considered a stream cipher algorithm, RC-4, which was easy to implement
on the sensor devices fast enough. Hence, it was chosen for the performance evalua-
tion of multi-level secure LEACH. In general, the RC-4 used a static key for the encryp-
tion and decryption processes. This static key was replaced by a dynamic key, which was
computed using the Toeplitz hash function in making the security model further stur-
dier. The security overhead due to RC-4 on the life-time of the network had been ana-
lyzed by developing a model for LEACH protocol. The average energy of the network
and the number of dead nodes were evaluated under three different levels models for
LEACH protocol. These results showed that levels 1, 2 and 3 without security fare better
than level 1, 2 and 3 models when security was included. Also, higher level LEACH per-
formed better than the lower levels of LEACH [32]. Toeplitz Hash algorithm was more
suitable for multi-process load balancing, and it could not apply in single-process MCU.
Mezrag et al. proposed a new secure protocol based on the LEACH routing proto-
col named hybrid cryptography-based scheme for secure data communication in clus-
ter-based WSN (HCBS). As a multi-constrained criteria approach, HCBS was built on
a combination of the cryptography technique based on elliptic curves to exchange keys
that used symmetric keys for data encryption and MAC operations. After a set of tests
on TOSSIM simulator, the results obtained showed that the proposal achieved good
performances in terms of energy consumption, average packet loss rate and end-to-end
delay compared with SecLEACH. In addition, HCBS guaranteed a high level of security
[33]. Although the cryptography technique based on elliptic curves had high security
strength, it is difficult to support the long-term operation of WSN.
Saadawy and Shaaban proposed MS-LEACH to enhance the security of SLEACH by
providing data confidentiality and node to cluster head (CH) authentication using pair-
wise keys shared between CHs and their cluster members. The security analysis of pro-
posed MS-LEACH showed that it had efficient security properties and achieves all WSN
security goals compared to the existing secured solutions of LEACH protocol. A sim-
ulation-based performance evaluation of MS-LEACH demonstrated the effectiveness
of proposed MS-LEACH protocol and showed that the protocol achieves the desired
security goals and outperforms other protocols in terms of the energy consumption, the
network lifetime, the network throughput and the normalized routing load [34]. The
pair-wise keys shared between CHs and their cluster members could defend against the
external attacks instead of the internal.
In order to save node energy and enhance wireless sensor network security, the
LEACH protocol has been improved. Zhang and Wei presented a routing protocol
based on clusters in which the sensing area consists of a number of equilateral hexa-
gons called clusters, and each of clusters had six equilateral triangles called cells. All
cells had equal number nodes and then all clusters had equal number nodes. The cell
heads were selected in each cell and then a cluster head was chosen from those six
cell heads. The data were sent to the base station through employing a multi-jumping
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 8 of 20

manner along a routing path consisting of cluster heads. In a certain grid, nodes
established pair-wise keys by utilizing the polynomial key management and ID-based
key management. The arithmetic balanced energy expense among all the nodes, saved
the node energy and prolonged the life of wireless sensor networks. Additionally, this
arithmetic improved the security of the wireless sensor network [35].
Wang et al. put forward a kind of secure LEACH routing protocol (SC-LEACH)
based on low-power CH selection algorithm. This protocol got the total number of
all nodes by their collaboration in selecting, to precisely calculate the present thresh-
olds with which the cluster heads are generated. Consequently, the probability of
producing optimal cluster heads in each round was the biggest, and the variance was
the smallest; thus, the network reached its optimal energy cost. The adoption of pre-
shared key pair dispatch improved the security of the routing effectively. The perfor-
mance of the two algorithm were compared synthetically by the following five index:
survived nodes in every round, total energy cost of all nodes, cluster heads produced
in every round, average energy cost of every round, sample second-order central
moments of the CHs in every round. Comparing with the LEACH protocol using the
symmetric keys dispatch, they validated the effectiveness of SC-LEACH by simula-
tion. SC-LEACH protocol used pre-shared key pair, so it was certainly much more
secure than LEACH protocol using the symmetric keys dispatch [36].
To address the issues of the early death of nodes, Zhou et al. proposed an improved
LEACH target location constraint (LEACH-TLC) algorithm. In this algorithm, a net-
work monitoring performance parameter model was constructed to obtain the wake-
up/dormant threshold of the network node. Moreover, by using this threshold, the
dormant strategy of node was designed to establish the working node set. Finally,
combined with the distance factor between this node and BS, a new cluster head
selection rule was proposed. The LEACH-TLC algorithm could reduce the number of
working nodes and energy consumption of the network, balance the energy consump-
tion distribution of the nodes and prolong network lifetime [37].
As a cluster-based routing protocol, LEACH is widely used in WSNs. Amirthal-
ingam and Anuratha proposed an improved LEACH protocol, named I-LEACH. This
proposed protocol improved the algorithm of electing cluster head nodes for LEACH
protocol. They considered the LEACH protocol relied on random threshold probabil-
ity to elect cluster head nodes, and then designed and introduced two score func-
tions for energy consumption and the distance from BS. The two score functions were
weighted and then summed, and then, the random threshold probability is added.
Multiply to get the new threshold probability function [38]. However, because it does
not consider security issues, WSNs are vulnerable to attacks, affecting the security of
the network. Therefore, many researchers have improved LEACH. Most researchers
use encryption and authentication algorithms to protect data, thereby increasing net-
work security. Protocols are usually evaluated using metrics such as energy consump-
tion, network lifetime and packet delivery rate. However, the secure routing protocols
improve network security at the expense of energy efficiency. Simultaneously, many
secure LEACHs are based on the assumption, which is the CH is trusted, while this
assumption cannot be guaranteed in practical applications of WSN.
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 9 of 20

3 Multidimensional secure clustered routing scheme

3.1 Lightweight trust management scheme
Generally, the binomial distribution is n repeated Bernoulli trials. The success or failure
of each Bernoulli trial is taken as the success (cooperation) or failure (non-cooperation)
number of the interaction between the nodes in WSNs. The node’s reputation can be
defined as the probability distribution function of binomial distribution. The reputation
value is updated by continuous interaction between nodes to calculate the new trust
value. Binomial distribution is a probability distribution mainly describing the distri-
bution of discrete events, which is usually composed of two mutually exclusive events.
Beta distribution refers to a set of continuous probability distributions defined in the
interval (0, 1). The Poisson distribution mainly describes the number of random events
that occur per unit time. The relationships between above three distribution are that the
binomial distribution can be regarded as the counterpart of Poisson distribution in dis-
crete time, and Beta distribution can be approximated as the binomial distribution when
n = 1. Due to the low computational complexity and storage space, this is, only coopera-
tion or non-cooperation numbers are recorded and calculated in Bernoulli trial, and it is
suitable for the resource-constrained sensor nodes to represent their interaction behav-
iors [39].

1. Binomial distribution and reputation value

Considering a binomial distribution Bin(n, k) represents the probability of k successes

in n repeated Bernoulli trials. Bin(n, k) can be expressed as follows:

n!
Bin(n, k) = pk (1 − p)n−k (1)
k!(n − k)!

where p is the probability of successes. Because there is cooperation or non-coopera-

tion in an interaction between nodes, the binomial distribution can be introduced to
describe the interaction behaviors. Here, we assume that the node i and node j inter-
acted a + b times, a represents the cooperation number, b is the non-cooperation num-
ber, and assume the probability of cooperation is p. Therefore, the reputation value Ri,j of
node i to node j is expressed by using the binomial distribution.

(a + b)! a
Ri,j = Bin(a + b, a) = p (1 − p)b (2)
a!b!

2. Direct trust value

Since Ri,j is the probability distribution function, and its maximum value represents
the greatest probability of p, thereby, the maximum value is defined as the trust value of
node i to node j, this is, the direct trust value DT i,j.
 ′
(a + b)! a
′
Ri,j = p (1 − p)b =0 (3)
a!b!
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 10 of 20

a
p= (4)
a+b

where p = 1 and p = 0 represent maximum and minimum values, respectively. Hence,

DTi,j is expressed as:
a
DTi,j = (5)
a+b

3. Trust initialization

Generally, the trust values of all nodes in WSNs are defined as the same initial
value, and all nodes are normal. We assume that the trust value is 0.5 for each node,
and a is equal to b. Both of them are not 0.
In the initialization phase, if a and b are set to smaller, this is, there are few inter-
actions between node i and node j. The obtained trust values are evidently not accu-
rate enough. For example, when interference occurs, the interaction failure is caused
by non-malicious nodes, and the evaluation of the trust value has a greater impact.
In contrast, if a and b have larger values, the historical weight will be increased. It
will impact on the subsequent trust evaluation eventually. The convergence time for
the trust value will become longer, and it may affect the normal operation of the net-
work. Thereby, the initial a and b should be set the appropriate values. Usually a and
b are set to 5.

4. Trust synthesis

To achieve the objectivity of trust value, we introduced CH’s recommendations as

the indirect trust value. We assume that the current cluster head is secure, and its
behaviors are trusted. We represent the direct trust value of CH to node j as DT CH,j .
Hence,

IT i,j = DT CH ,j (6)

Meanwhile, an indirect trust weight wind 0 ≤ wind < 1 is introduced to synthesize

the final trust value Ti, j.

Ti,j = (1 − wind ) × DTi,j + wind × ITi,j (7)

 � �
 0.5
 if �DTi,j − ITi,j � < ξ
= | DT
DTi,j −ITi,j |
(8)
� �
wind else if ξ ≤ �DTi,j − ITi,j � < 1 and 0.5 < DTi,j
 i,j
0 otherwise


where ξ represents a deviation between the direct trust value and the indirect trust
value. Usually, ξ is less than 10% of the initial trust value. The synthesized indirect trust
value can defend against the slander attacks. Due to the CH’s trustworthiness, the collu-
sion attacks can be mitigated effectively.
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 11 of 20

3.2 Environment domain
Generally speaking, in many improved schemes for cluster head election, the residual
energy of node and the distance between node and BS are considered and introduced
to elect an optimal cluster head. Nonetheless, we have noticed that the environment
domain is an important factor for large-scale WSN. This is due to the fact that the
local harsh environment will impact on the transmission of information. If a node
with poor external environment is elected as a cluster head, it will affect the stable
operation of the network and shorten the network lifetime. Hence, we study the envi-
ronmental factor, which expresses as follows:

k

 0 M k (i) < Mmin
 M(i)−M k k k k k
min − 1 M
N min ≤ M (i) < ML , N > 1, ML = log N 2 + Mmin


k k k k
Eenv (i) = 1 ML ≤ M (i) ≤ MH
M k −M(i) k k , N > 1, M k = M k
< M k (i) ≤ Mmax

N max − 1 MH max − log N 2


 H

0 k
Mmax < M (i)k

(9)
k (i) is an environmental domain parameter created by the sensor node i for
where Eenv  
environmental factor k, which represents temperature, humidity or radiation. MLk , MH
k

is the normal operating interval of the sensor node i for the environmental
 factor k. If
the environmental data collected by the node ( M (i)) is within the range MLk , MH
k k
, it
can be considered that the performance of the sensor node i will not be affected by envi-
ronmental factors k. So, Eenv
k (i) is set to 1. Otherwise, it will be reduced, and the negative

influence of environmental factors k on nodes i tends to be more obvious. In order to

standardize a single environmental field, we have introduced and as the boundary of
environmental factors

k
Mmin and
 Mmax , which means that the sampled data of the factor
k

is only allowed in Mmin

k k
, Mmax . A single environmental domain function is expressed in
Eq. (9).

3.3 Security domain
To enhance the security, we introduce the trust values as one of the dimensions in the
electing cluster head phase. The candidate cluster head nodes in the current round
process take into account the trust value factor of the last round of cluster head dis-
tribution to the nodes in the cluster. The trust value is obtained by Eq. (8). We define
TVave is all nodes’ average trust value in the last round of cluster. The security domain
for node j is represented by STV j , which is expressed as the following expression:


  Ti,j − TVave
STV j = (10)
TVave

when an abnormality is detected for a node, which trust value may be much lower than
TVave, and then STV j < 0, so that reduces the probability of a malicious node being


elected as the cluster head.

Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 12 of 20

3.4 Multidimensional secure clustered routing

In classic LEACH, the probability that a normal node becomes a cluster head is set by
experience in advance, and there is great uncertainty. There is no way to ensure that
malicious nodes are not elected as cluster heads simultaneously. In this subsection,
we will introduce the security domain and the environment domain into the multidi-
mensional secure clustered routing (MSCR) scheme. The energy domain and the dis-
tance domain are considered into MSCR. A novel threshold function for the cluster
head election in the current round is calculated as follows:
Eres (j ) dBS (j )
   
P k (i) + ω
1 ωeng × Eeng (j )
+ ωd × dBS−max + ωenv × Eenv TV × Stv j , if i ∈ G
T (i) = 1−P(r mod P)
0, if i ∈
/G
(11)
where Eres j is the current energy value of the node j. Eeng j is the initial energy value
 

of the node j. dBS−max is the maximum distance from nodes to BS. dBS j is a distance


from node j to BS. P represents the probability that the sensor node defaults to the clus-
ter head node, G represents a group of sensors that have not become a cluster head node
during the previous (1/P) round, and r represents the current round process. ωeng , ωd ,
ωenv and ωTV are the dimension weights, which represent the energy domain, the dis-
tance domain, the environment domain and the security domain, respectively. They sat-
isfy the following expression:

ωeng + ωd + ωenv + ωTV = 1 (12)

The operation process of MSCR is shown as follows:

Step 1 In the first round, the cluster head selection phase and the stabilization
phase of the LEACH are directly performed. The current information (including
trust value) of each cluster member is transmitted to the BS through the control
packet through via cluster heads. The Eeng and dBS of each node can be obtained.
Usually, ωeng , ωd , ωenv and ωTV are set as 0.25, respectively.
Step 2 Based on the received information, the BS calculates and broadcasts TVave.
Step 3 Each cluster member broadcasts a control packet to a node within a preset
radius of the cluster and simultaneously confirms the number of neighbor nodes
by the number of received control packets;
Step 4 Each cluster member qualifies to be a cluster head node compared with
Eq. (11) threshold function to determine whether it can become the cluster head
of the current round process.
Step 5 The stabilization process is based on the LEACH protocol. The nodes in
the cluster transmit the collected information and the current node information
(including trust value) to the cluster head through the data packet and control
packet, respectively, and the data are compressed by the cluster head and trans-
mitted to the BS.
Step 6 Repeating the steps from Step 2 to Step 5.
Step 7 This algorithm ends when there are too many nodes dying.
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 13 of 20

4 Mathematical experiment and discussion

In this section, the proposed MSCR will be simulated and analyzed to compare with
LEACH, I-LEACH and LEACH-TLC. The energy consumption, the network lifetime
and the data packets transmission are taken as the evaluation metrics.

4.1 Experimental methods
In this subsection, the MATLAB is used to simulate and compare our proposed proto-
col with LEACH, I-LEACH and LEACH-TLC. To conveniently understand the results,
we provide explanations of the following terms. The network lifetime is represented as
the number of alive nodes, and the first node dead (FND) and ENL (End of Network
Lifetime) were further measured by four algorithms. The ENL refers to the dead nodes
exceeding 98% of the total nodes. In addition, in order to verify the impact of the intro-
duced trust values on security, the security attack, i.e., discarding data packets, will be
regarded as interferences to impose on the network during certain periods of time dur-
ing protocol operation. The specific simulation parameters are shown in Table 1.
The impact of environment domain (wildfire, heavy rain) uses a radiation model [40].
In this model, the impact of the environmental event decreases with increase in dis-
tance from the center of the event. In environment domain, the temperature of the event
center will inevitably destroy the sensor node, and as the distance increases, the temper-
ature will become lower, and the failure probability of the sensor node will also decrease
accordingly. Rainstorm events adopt the uniform distribution pattern of natural obser-
vation. In this model, the event area is massive, and the impact of the event on the sen-
sor nodes in the area is exactly the same. Depending on the severity of the rainstorm, the
affected nodes will experience performance degradation or complete failure.
For the convenience of analysis, the threshold functions of LEACH [12], LEACH-TLC
[37] and I-LEACH [38] are shown in Eqs. (13), (14) and (16), respectively. In LEACH, the
principle for electing cluster heads is to randomly generate a random number between
0 and 1. If the generated random number of a node is less than the threshold value T(i),
the node is elected and announced as the cluster head. In each round, if a node has been
elected as the cluster head, then set T(i) to 0, so that the node will not be repeatedly

Table 1 Simulation parameters

Parameters Value

Nodes number 100

Sensed area 200 × 200 m2
BS coordinate (100, 100)
Initial energy 0.1 J
Length of data packet 4000 bit
Initial environment domain value 1
P 6%
Number of rounds 1000
sEelec 50 nJ/bit/m−1
EDA 5 nJ/bit/m−1
εfs 0.0013 pJ/bit/m−4
εmp 10 pJ/bit/m−2
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 14 of 20

elected as the cluster head. For the node that has not been elected as the cluster head,
it will be elected with the probability of T(i). When the number of cluster head nodes
increases, the probability of the remaining nodes being elected increases as the clus-
ter head, this is, the threshold T(i) increases, and the probability of a node generating a
random number less than T(n) also increases. When there is only one node that is not
elected as the cluster head, T(i) is set to 1. Here, T(i) can be expressed as:

 P

, if i ∈ G
1
T (i) = 1−P r mod P (13)
0, if i ∈
/G

where P is the proportion of cluster heads in all nodes, r is the current round, and
r mod P1 represents the number of nodes that have been elected as cluster heads in this
round. G is the set of nodes that have not been elected cluster heads in this round.
n

�
P + �T (si ) + (1/n) (�T (si )), if i ∈ G

T (si ) = i=1 (14)
0, if i ∈
/G


Here,

�T (si )=αEpavg (si )+β(1 − ωst (si ))+γ (1 − ωss (si )) (15)

where P is the desired percentage of CHs in a WSN, �T (si ) is the threshold compen-
sation value that the node si becomes the CH, Epavg (si ) is the RE rate of the node si ,
ssssωst (si ) is the distance factor between the target and node si , ωss (si ) is the distance
factor between the node si and the BS, and α, β, γ represent the weight factors of the
threshold, their values are changing with the monitoring area, the monitoring environ-
ment and the energy consumption of the nodes,
     P , if i ∈ G
Ecurrent dBS 1
T (i) = w1 + w2 1−P r mod P (16)
Emax dfar 0, if i ∈
/G

where w1 + w2 = 1, and both of them are given according to the preference for the energy
and distance of the network. dBS is distance between the node and BS, and dfar is dis-
tance to the BS from the farthest node of the cluster. Ecurrent represents the residual
energy of a node, and Emax represents the maximum energy of a node. For LEACH-TLC
and I-LEACH, their T(i)s decrease based on the requirements of load balancing to fur-
ther improve the energy efficiency. Thereby, how to reasonably reduce T(i) to meet the
energy efficiency and security requirements is also our concern.

4.2 Results and discussion

The experimental results are shown in Figs. 1, 2 and 3. The results will be discussed in
energy consumption, network lifetime and data packets transmission, respectively.

1. Energy consumption
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 15 of 20

Fig. 1 Comparison of energy consumption

Fig. 2 Comparison of network lifetime

The energy consumption of sensor nodes in LEACH, I-LEACH, LEACH-TLC and

MSCR will change with the network operation time. As the network working time
increases, the sensor node energy consumption gradually increases. When the network
starts operating, the difference between the energy consumption of the four protocols
is small within a short period of time. Subsequently, the energy consumption increases
sharply with the increase of the operating time, and the difference gradually increases. It
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 16 of 20

Fig. 3 Comparison of data packets transmission

can be clearly seen that the energy consumption of LEACH is always higher than MSCR,
LEACH-TLC and I-LEACH. Due to the dormant strategy of node, the energy consump-
tion of LEACH-TLC is the smallest in the four protocols.
When the network operation reaches the middle stage, all of them consume a large
amount of energy. The energy consumption is relatively slow in the middle stage to
end stage. It can be seen in Fig. 1 that MSCR, LEACH-TLC and I-LEACH have lower
energy consumption. This is due to that the energy consumption and transmission are
both taken into account. Among them, the MSCR also has environmental awareness,
which can make it avoid dangerous areas and elect more suitable node as CH. There-
fore, MSCR has the lowest energy consumption. In LEACH, when the network oper-
ates to about 280 rounds, its residual energy is only 7%. When the network operates to
596 rounds in I-LEACH, the residual energy is 7%. When the network operates to 1000
rounds in MSCR and LEACH-TLC, the residual energy is still 10% and 12%, respectively.

2. Network lifetime

The curves of the number of alive nodes with the network operation time are shown
in Fig. 2 based on LEACH, I-LEACH, LEACH-TLC and MSCR. In Fig. 2, the FND of
LEACH appeared in the 56th round until the ENL in the 420th round, and the FND in
I-LEACH appeared in the 70th round until there were about 5 nodes left in the 800th
round. For MSCR, the FND appeared in the 82nd round. Until the 1000th round, about
8 nodes are still alive. For LEACH-TLC, the FND appeared in the 95nd round. Until the
1000th round, about 5 nodes are still alive.
In Table 2, it has shown the comparison with the FND and ENL of LEACH, I-LEACH,
LEACH-TLC and MSCR. The data were averaged for multiple simulations. The FND
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 17 of 20

Table 2 Comparison of network lifetime

Protocol Round of FND Round of ENL

LEACH 56 420
I-LEACH 70 930
LEACH-TLC 95 1000 +
MSCR 90 1000 +
Improved 61% 114%

in I-LEACH appeared later, and its network stability increased by 25% compared to
LEACH. Meanwhile, compared with LEACH, the network stability of MSCR and
LEACH-TLC had increased by 61% and 69%, respectively, and both of network lifetimes
had extended by 138%. When the simulation ended, the number of alive nodes in MSCR
is more than the number of alive nodes in LEACH-TLC. This is due to the fact that the
consideration of security could enhance the availability during a long term operation of
the network.
This is due to that, I-LEACH, LEACH-TLC and MSCR consider energy consumption
and distance to make energy consumption more balanced, the network lifetimes of the
three are longer than LEACH. However, I-LEACH and LEACH-TLC do not consider
the impact of environmental factors, and the cluster head node cannot be avoided to
avoid dangerous areas, so the network lifetime is shortened. In contrast, MSCR can bet-
ter extend the network lifetime because of its environmental awareness.

3. Data packets transmission

In Fig. 3, the comparison of data packets transmission of four protocols demonstrates

that the transmitted data packets in MSCR are much higher than the LEACH. The trans-
mitted data packets in I-LEACH and LEACH-TLC are about 15% and 11% higher than
MSCR, respectively. This is because the latter has the overhead of the security domain
and environment domain. For WSN, the secure and reliable transmission of data should
be considered essentially with lower energy consumption and longer network lifetime.
Hence, the reduction of data packets can be tolerated to a certain extent.

5 Conclusions
For large-scale wireless sensor network, a single planar routing protocol in the net-
work has not only a slow convergence rate, but also a complex network topology
reduces the reliability and accuracy of the data transmission process, although it has
better robustness. Therefore, both simplifying the network topology and improving
the transmission efficiency in secure need to be considered comprehensively. In gen-
eral, the network is self-governed by a hierarchical routing protocol, which can effec-
tively cope with large-scale application scenarios. The improvement of security in
hierarchical routing protocols mainly depends on the deployment of traditional secu-
rity scheme such as encryption or authentication. However, the constrained resources
of sensor node limit the application of high-strength security algorithms, the encryp-
tion and authentication schemes cannot defend against the internal attacks. Thereby,
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 18 of 20

we try adopting the trust value into the design of hierarchical routing protocol, and
look forward to improving transmission security and preventing the internal attacks
while reducing computing overhead.
The contribution of this paper is to propose a multidimensional secure clustered
routing scheme,(MSCR), which can improve the availability of the network, prolong
the lifetime of the network and enhance the network security. By using the residual
energy, distance and environment factors, the size of the cluster can be better con-
strained to improve energy efficiency, and avoid excessive energy consumption of a
node. Simultaneously, the LTMS is introduced into MSCR. Specifically, the related
attributes of the trust value are introduced in the cluster head election process, so
that the protocol is improved in energy efficiency and the security is also enhanced
accordingly.
The simulation results showed that MSCR outperforms LEACH-TLC, I-LEACH and
LEACH in prolonging the network lifetime and balancing energy consumption. It can be
seen from the simulation experiment of the number of data packets that the introduc-
tion of trust value in binomial-based trust management scheme can effectively mitigate
the influence of malicious nodes on cluster head election, which can greatly guarantee
the security of the overall network. In the near future, we will research and analyze the
impact of different distributions on secure routing protocols in hierarchical wireless sen-
sor networks.

Abbreviations
IoT: Internet of Things; WSN: Wireless sensor network; CH: Cluster head; BS: Base station; LTMS: Lightweight trust manage-
ment scheme; MSCR: Multidimensional secure clustered routing; LEACH: Low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy;
I-LEACH: Improved LEACH; AAWBAN: Anonymous authentication for wireless body area networks; PT: Predictability trust.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers who have contributed to the enhancement of the paper’s completeness
with their valuable suggestions.

Authors’ contributions
The six authors of the paper have extensively participated in all of the paper writing. WF mainly worked on the
researched. WZ, WC and JL revised this paper. YN and YY mainly added to and revised the related works. All of the
authors equally contributed to reviewing the manuscript.

Funding
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51874300, 61571303),
the National Science and Technology Major Project of China (Grant No. 2018ZX03001031), the National Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of China and Shanxi Provincial People’s Government Jointly Funded Project of China for Coal Base
and Low Carbon (Grant No. U1510115), the Qing Lan Project, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No.
2013T60574), the Shanghai Municipal Key Project (Grant No. 19511132401), the Shanghai Municipal Natural Science
Foundation (Grant No. 18ZR1437600), the Fundamental Research Funds for State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Auto-
mation for Process Industries (Grant No. PAL-N201703) and the National Key Research and Development Program of
China—Internet of Things and Smart City Key Program (Nos. 2019YFB2101600, 2019YFB2101602, 2019YFB2101602-03).

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author details
1
Science and Technology on Micro‑system Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Micro‑system and Information Technology,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China. 2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049,
China. 3 School of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116,
China. 4 School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Canberra 2610, Australia.
5
School of Data Science and Media Intelligence, Communication University of China, Beijing 100024, China. 6 Shanghai
Fang et al. J Wireless Com Network (2021) 2021:14 Page 19 of 20

Research Center for Wireless Communication, Shanghai 201210, China. 7 Fuzhou Internet of Things Open Lab Co., Ltd.,
350015, Fuzhou, China.

Received: 31 December 2019 Accepted: 11 December 2020

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