Distributed Computing-Based Optimal Route Finding Algorithm for Trusted Devices in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a smart infrastructure where devices share captured data with the respective server or edge modules. However, secure and reliable communication is among the challenging tasks in these networks, as shared channels are used to transmit packets. In this paper, a decision tree is integrated with other metrics to form a secure distributed communication strategy for IoT. Initially, every device works collaboratively to form a distributed network. In this model, if a device is deployed outside the coverage area of the nearest server, it communicates indirectly through the neighboring devices. For this purpose, every device collects data from the respective neighboring devices, such as hop count, average packet transmission delay, criticality factor, link reliability, and RSSI value, etc. These parameters are used to find an optimal route from the source to the destination. Secondly, the proposed approach has enabled devices to learn from the environment and adjust the optimal route-finding formula accordingly. Moreover, these devices and server modules must ensure that every packet is transmitted securely, which is possible only if it is encrypted with an encryption algorithm. For this purpose, a decision tree-enabled device-to-server authentication algorithm is presented where every device and server must take part in the offline phase. Simulation results have verified that the proposed distributed communication approach has the potential to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data during transmission. Moreover, the proposed approach has outperformed the existing approaches in terms of communication cost, processing overhead, end-to-end delay, packet loss ratio, and throughput. Finally, the proposed approach is adoptable in different networking infrastructures.