A Comparative Evaluation of Two Intrusion-tolerant Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged recently as one of the most attractive research subjects. The resource-constraint characteristics of WSNs limit the secure design and development of security protocols and presumably thwart the integration of an intrusion detection system (IDS). Whilst, sensor nodes which usually operate in unattended and even harsh environments, are prone to failures and vulnerable to malicious attacks. For reliable and secure communications in WSNs, intrusion-tolerant routing becomes possibly a critical attribute that should be integrated into WSNs. However, there was not much research investigated on this topic. In order to provide a useful starting point for researchers interested in the subject, in this paper, we comparatively study two intrusion-tolerant routing protocols for WSNs, namely INSENS and ITSRP. Simulations were especially invested to assess their practicality. We also propose some suggestions to improve these two protocols. Although the feasibility of our suggestions is still questionable and deserves more investigation, we consider this study as the first step to fulfill the design of intrusion-tolerant WSNs as well as to build a complete intrusion-tolerant framework hereafter.