ATAW-TM: An Adaptive, Threshold-Free, and Automatically Weighted Trust Model for Mitigating Multiple Types of Denial-of-Service Attacks in Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) including Software Defined Wireless Sensor are partic-ularly vulnerable to Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. Trust models are widely acknowl-edged as an effective strategy to mitigate the threat of a successful DoS attacks in WSNs. However, existing trust models commonly rely on threshold configurations that are based on the network administrator’s experience and leaving the challenging task of weight allocation for various trust metrics to network users. This limits the widespread application of trust models as a WSN defense mechanism. To address this issue, this study proposes and analyses theoretically an Adaptive, Threshold-Free, and Automati-cally Weighted Trust Model (ATAW-TM) for SDWSNs. The model architecture is aligned with the layered centralized management architecture of SDWSNs, which makes it flex-ible and enhances its responsiveness. The proposed model does not require manual threshold configuration and weight allocation, and allows for a rapid trust system re-covery. It has significant advantages compared to to existing trust models, and is po-tentially more feasible to implemented on a large scale.