ARCMT: Anchor Node-Based Range Free Cooperative Multi Trusted Secure Underwater Localization Using Fuzzifier

Secure and precise node localization is a critical challenge for the underwater acoustic sensor network. The sensor node distribution in the aquatic environment is the most vulnerable to many external attacks, interrupting the nodes to find the precise location information and causing complete network failure due to excessive, unnecessary communication and power consumption. This paper proposes an anchor nodes-based range-free cooperative multi-trust management system using fuzzy logic to provide a secure and reliable underwater localization. The multi-trust-based scheme protects the sensor nodes from untrusted or malicious nodes, and the lightweight Mamdani fuzzy model is used to reduce circuit complexity and memory consumption. The proposed scheme does not require the cluster head to perform trust-related tasks, which reduces the heavy overburden on the cluster heads with their regular task and energy budget to enhance their lifetime. Therefore, the proposed method uses Anchor node-based joint trust calculation and localization of unlocalized cluster members, providing a better reliable trust evaluation and better accuracy and stability in terms of the localization error. The simulation report shows that the proposed scheme improves the average accuracy by 10.77%, average stability by 23.7%, average malicious node detection rate by 42.4%, and average false detection rate by 38.25% compared to other single-cluster head-based and traditional energy trust-based systems.