Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become a fundamental component of modern monitoring and data acquisition systems, supporting applications such as environmental surveillance, healthcare monitoring, industrial automation, military operations, and smart city infrastructures. Despite their widespread adoption, WSNs remain highly vulnerable to various security threats due to their distributed architecture, limited computational resources, and deployment in unattended environments. Among these threats, clone attacks represent one of the most severe security challenges, where an adversary captures a legitimate sensor node, extracts its credentials, and creates multiple replicas that are subsequently deployed within the network. These cloned nodes can disrupt network operations, compromise data integrity, launch routing attacks, and facilitate unauthorized access to sensitive information. Consequently, the development of efficient and reliable clone detection mechanisms is essential for maintaining the security and functionality of wireless sensor networks. This paper proposes an intelligent clone attack detection framework designed to identify replicated sensor nodes while minimizing energy consumption and memory overhead. The proposed approach combines node identity verification, location-based monitoring, neighbor information analysis, and anomaly detection techniques to accurately identify suspicious node behavior. Relevant network parameters, including node mobility patterns, communication frequency, packet transmission characteristics, and neighborhood consistency, are analyzed to distinguish legitimate sensor nodes from cloned replicas. The framework incorporates lightweight processing mechanisms and optimized data structures to ensure efficient operation within the resource-constrained environment of wireless sensor networks. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed clone detection framework achieves high detection accuracy, low false alarm rates, and reduced communication overhead compared with conventional detection schemes. The system effectively identifies clone attacks while preserving network lifetime through energy-aware operations and memory-efficient storage management. Furthermore, the framework exhibits strong scalability and adaptability across varying network sizes and deployment conditions. The results indicate that the proposed method provides a secure, lightweight, and practical solution for protecting wireless sensor networks against clone attacks while maintaining efficient resource utilization. The framework contributes to enhancing network reliability, security, and operational longevity in modern wireless sensing applications.
Keywords : Wireless Sensor Networks, Clone Attack Detection, Energy Efficiency, Memory Optimization, Network Security, Sensor Node Replication, Anomaly Detection, Resource-Constrained Networks, Secure Routing, Internet of Things.
Author : 1K. R.V. Durga Bhavani, 2Usha Reddygari, 3S.D. Swamy Puvvala, 4Ande Himaja
Title : INTELLIGENT CLONE ATTACK DETECTION IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS WITH REDUCED ENERGY CONSUMPTION
Volume/Issue : 2025;02(12)
Page No : 249-257