Outlier detection based fault tolerant data aggregation for wireless sensor networks

Data aggregation protocols are essential for wireless sensor networks to prolong network lifetime by reducing energy consumption of sensor nodes. For mission critical wireless sensor networks, however, not only the energy consumption of sensor nodes but also the correctness of the data aggregation results is critical. This paper presents a fault tolerant data aggregation scheme that eliminates the false data sent by malfunctioning and/or compromised sensor nodes. To conserve energy while eliminating false data, an in-network outlier detection technique that is based on Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) scheme is used. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is able to reduce the number of false data transmissions thereby increasing the data aggregation accuracy.