LSTM-NV: A combined scheme against selective forwarding attack in event-driven wireless sensor networks under harsh environments

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are susceptible to selective forwarding attacks, which can lead to reduced network efficiency and compromise the integrity of transmitted data. The indistinguishability between malicious behavior and normal packet loss in harsh environments exacerbates the challenge. To address this, in this paper, we provide a combined detection scheme called LSTM-NV, consisting of a training stage and a detecting stage. During the training stage, we integrate variational mode decomposition (VMD) with a long short term memory (LSTM) model to learn normal nodes’ forwarding behavior and then predict errors for each node. During the detecting stage, dynamic thresholds are determined to identify local anomaly points and a novel neighbor voting method is employed to differentiate between malicious and normal nodes. Our scheme demonstrates superior performance with a low average missed detection rate (MDR) of 0.6% and a low average false detection rate (FDR) of 3.3% compared to other effective methods, while also offering lower detection algorithmic complexity.