Intrusion detection in sensor networks: a non-cooperative game approach

Insufficiency of memory and battery power of sensors makes the security of sensor networks a hard task to do. This insufficiency also makes applying the existing methods of securing other type of networks on the sensor networks unsuitable. We propose a game theoretic framework for defensing nodes in a sensor network. We apply three different schemes for defense. Our main concern in all three schemes is finding the most vulnerable node in a sensor network and protecting it. In the first scheme we formulate attack-defense problem as a two-player, nonzero-sum, non-cooperative game between an attacker and a sensor network. We show that this game achieves Nash equilibrium and thus leading to a defense strategy for the network. In the second scheme we use Markov decision process to predict the most vulnerable sensor node. In the third scheme we use an intuitive metric (node's traffic) and protect the node with the highest value of this metric. We evaluate the performance of each of these three schemes, and show that the proposed game framework significantly increases the chance of success in defense strategy for sensor network.