LTMS: A Lightweight Trust Management System for Wireless Medical Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Medical Sensor Networks (WMSNs) offer ubiquitous health applications that enhance patients' quality of life and support national health systems. Detecting internal attacks on WMSNs is still challenging since cryptographic measures can not protect from compromised or selfish sensor nodes. Establishing a trust relationship between sensor nodes is recognized as a promising measure to reinforce the overall security of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). However, the existing trust schemes for WSNs are not necessarily fit for WMSNs due to their different operation, topology, resources limitations, and critical applications. In this paper, the aforementioned factors are regarded, and accordingly, two different methods to evaluate the trust value have been proposed to fit in-body, on-body, and off-body sensor nodes. Our Lightweight Trust Management System (LTMS) provides a further line of defense to detect packet drop attacks launched by compromised or selfish sensor nodes. Moreover, simulation results show that LTMS is more robust against complicated on-off attacks and can significantly reduce the processing overhead.