SPIN: An Active Location Verification Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

With the rapid development of the internet of things, location information becomes increasingly important for various applications. However, the localization information of network devices are vulnerable to various attacks. In this paper, we propose SPIN, a scheme for location verification that allows the access point (AP) to verify credibility of a reported location from a network node. This is achieved by having an object move actively around the AP at a random speed. The moving object blocks the direct path between the AP and individual network nodes at a random time and deliberately creates abrupt changes in the received signal strength (RSS). This paper proposes a scheme so that the AP can distinguish a malicious node from a legitimate one based on the reported RSSs from a network node and its reported location information. Simulation results show that the proposed SPIN scheme achieves high probability of detecting a malicious node and low probability of treating a legitimate node as malicious.