Cross-layer Based Intrusion Detection System for Wireless Sensor Networks: Challenges, Solutions, and Future Directions

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of numerous affordable, energy-efficient, compact wireless sensors. These sensors are designed to collect, process, and communicate data from their surrounding environment. Several energy-efficient protocols have been created specifically for WSNs to optimize data transfer rates and prolong network lifespan. Multi-channel protocols in WSN are one of the ways to optimize efficiency and enable seamless communication between nodes, thereby reducing interference and minimizing packet loss through multiple channels. Despite their numerous advantages in data sensing and monitoring, various attacks can pose a threat to a WSN. There are several types of attacks that a WSN may encounter, including spoofing, eavesdropping, jamming, sinkhole attacks, wormhole attacks, black hole attacks, Sybil attacks, and DoS attacks. One of the strategies for enhancing security in WSNs is implementing a cross-layer intrusion detection system (IDS) that can detect initial indicators of attacks that target vulnerabilities across multiple WSN layers. This paper reviews the existing IDS at each layer and the challenges in an energy-efficient cross-layer IDS for WSN in terms of the attacks and IDS approaches.