ETARP: An energy efficient trust-aware routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

This paper presents a new routing protocol called Secure and Energy Aware Routing Protocol (ETARP) designed for energy efficiency and security for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). ETARP attempts to deal with WSN applications operating in extreme environments such as the battlefield. The key part of the routing protocol is route selection based on utility theory. The concept of utility is a novel approach to simultaneously factor energy efficiency and trustworthiness of routes in the routing protocol. ETARP discovers and selects routes on the basis of maximum utility with incurring additional cost in overhead compared to the common AODV (Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector) routing protocol. Simulation results show that, in comparison to previously proposed routing protocols, namely, AODV-EHA and LTB-AODV (Light-Weight Trust-Based Routing Protocol), the proposed ETARP can keep the same security level while achieving more energy efficiency for data packet delivery.