Location Verification Assisted by a Moving Obstacle 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 is vulnerable to various attacks and not always trustworthy. In this paper, we propose a location verification scheme that allows the access point (AP) to verify credibility of a reported location from a network node with assistance of an obstacle that moves actively in the network at a random speed. When the obstacle blocks the transmissions between the AP and a network node, the received signal strength (RSS) at the node is reduced. For location verification, a network node is asked to report its location and the RSS for a period of time. Based on the changes in the reported RSS and the mobility information of the obstacle, the AP can determine whether the network node has reported the correct location. An analytical model is developed to find the performance of the proposed scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves high probability of detecting malicious nodes and low probability of treating legitimate nodes as malicious. Simulation results have also verified the accuracy of the analysis.