Volume 18, Number 2

Decentralized Blockchain-Based Trust and Security Framework for Cooperative Multipath Routing in WSNs and IoT Networks

  Authors

Jogendra Kumar ¹, Himanshu Bartwal ², Neetu Prajapati ³, Gagan Bhatt ¹, ¹G.B.Pant Institute of Engineering
and Technology, India, ²Pranveer Singh Institute of Technology, India, ³Women Institute of Technology Dehradun, India

  Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and Internet of Things (IoT) networks have applications in smart cities, industrial monitoring, healthcare, and environmental surveillance, but since the networks have open wireless communication, resource constraints, and decentralized architecture, they are very susceptible to security threats such as malicious routing, manipulation of trust, and interference with data. Although cooperative multipath routing enhances fault tolerance and reliability via distributing traffic among more than one path, identifying correct evaluation of trust and ensuring the safety of coordination between the involved nodes are critical factors of success. Currently used trust based routing methods are generally centralized or a model of trust that is not affected by dynamic attacks, which restricts the ability to scale as well as the ability to withstand such attacks. The present paper suggests a decentralized blockchain-based trust and security system in cooperative multipath routing within the WSN and IoT systems. The framework combines lightweight blockchain technology and cooperative routing in order to offer safe, transparent, and tamper proof trust management. Network nodes keep an unchangeable distributed registry of routing behavior, updates of trust, and history of cooperation, which means that malicious nodes cannot lie or modify trust information. Smart contracts apply to compute the trust and route validation depending on the key performance indicators, including packet forwarding success, compliance with latency, and consistency of behavior, which are useful in dynamically determining reliable routing paths. Results obtained through simulation shows that the suggested framework has a better packet delivery ratio, routing stability, and resistance to blackhole, gray hole, and Sybil attacks than regular trust-based routing schemes, and has acceptable computational and communication overhead. This is because these findings demonstrate that the solution under consideration provides a scalable, cost-effective, and secure means of cooperative routing in next-generation WSN and IoT networks.

  Keywords

Network Blockchain, Wireless Sensor Networks, Internet of Things, Cooperative Multipath Routing, Trust Management, Network security