An Advanced Survey on Secure Energy-Efficient Hierarchical Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are often deployed in hostile environments, which make such networks highly vulnerable and increase the risk of attacks against this type of network. WSN comprise of large number of sensor nodes with different hardware abilities and functions. Due to the limited memory resources and energy constraints, complex security algorithms cannot be used in sensor networks. Therefore, it is necessary to balance between the security level and the associated energy consumption overhead to mitigate the security risks. Hierarchical routing protocol is more energy-efficient than other routing protocols in WSNs. Many secure cluster-based routing protocols have been proposed in the literature to overcome these constraints. In this paper, we discuss Secure Energy-Efficient Hierarchical Routing Protocols in WSNs and compare them in terms of security, performance and efficiency. Security issues for WSNs and their solutions are also discussed.