IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - February 2020 - 5

Credit: Forbes, Sep. 27, 2017

security, and attacks, including coexistence intrusions.
ZigBee is studied through Monte-Carlo simulations and
benchtop experiments to highlight WSN security issues
and the need for intrusion detection. An intrusion detection system (IDS) is used to identify the presence of
intruders. Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) devices and
standardized protocols are used due to the general trends
toward the use of COTS components in commercial IoT
networks and in space applications. Both areas, typically,
favor high redundancy, high replenishment rates over
custom-built components. Examples include the international space station [4], intersatellite communication
modules [1], and nanosatellite swarms [11]. WSNs are
commonly deployed in environments where the spectrum
changes rapidly due to the number of connected devices,
demand, packet size or services in operation and changes
in the physical environment due to varying fading levels,
obstacles, path losses, and spurious interference. Beyond
these nonmalicious factors, critical WSN applications
may incentivize malicious attackers to intentionally disrupt or compromise network operation. Presently, WSNs
are highly susceptible to attacks, especially Denial of
Service (DoS) [12] attacks and, as WSN operating environments become more diverse and attack techniques
develop, security improvements are required. The challenges of system coexistence add even more complexity
and need to be examined, as many modern WSN protocols adopt the same physical (PHY) and/or medium
access control (MAC) layers [9]. This phenomenon is
explored by investigating the IEEE 802.15.4 PHY and
MAC layers, which are utilized by ZigBee and by various WSN protocols.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows.
The "Related Work" section gives a brief description of
related work, the "Signal Model" section outlines the signal model used as a case study, and the "Operating
Assumptions" section provides adopted assumptions. The
"Security in Wireless Sensor Networks" section summaries security in WSNs, the "Attacks on Wireless Sensor
Networks" section describes various WSN attacks, and
the "Discussion: Attacks on WSNs" section discusses
FEBRUARY 2020

specific attacks using Monte-Carlo simulations and benchtop tests. Finally, the "Future Directions" section provides
future directions for enhancing WSN IDS design and security and the "Conclusion" section concludes this article.

RELATED WORK
Interference and intrusion detection is not a new area in wireless communication systems, but it is an area which requires
expansion and enhancements to match the current trend of
WSNs. Security for WSNs is the most relevant work which
relates to this article and includes investigating applied security techniques [9], threats to WSNs [13], how to secure
WSNs [14], and existing security issues in WSN protocols [15]. Additionally, related work includes research into
WSN attacks, where Shanthi and Rajan [16] provides a brief
overview of attacks and detection methods and the work in
[17] and [18] focuses on jamming attacks and associated
detection measures only. Flexible and reliable softwaredefined reactive jamming is shown to be feasible in [19],
which provides attack deployment evidence for the previous
descriptive studies. DoS attacks are outlined in [12], which
also states that security is the linchpin of good sensor network
design and detection can aide deployments. Research on
intrusion detection and IDSs include using traditional techniques such as analyzing the received signal strength or packet
delivery rate [20] and machine learning algorithms developed specifically for detecting intrusions on WSNs [21].
These machine learning techniques use features such as
packet collision ratio, delivery waiting time, and power consumption rate, to name but a few. Detailed surveys on intrusion detection in WSNs, the main concepts, and the vital
areas can be found in [22] and [23]. However, this type of
research is not confined to WSNs as it is a current research
topic across wireless networks, in general, including global
positioning system signals [24], WiFi signals [25], and the
coexistence of wireless systems [26]. This article provides its
contribution by summarizing WSN security, vulnerabilities,
interference and intrusion attacks, and detection methods. In
contrast, the literature above, typically, focuses on a specific

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