Uthayakumar Chindiyababy, Jayaraman Ramkumar, Raja Hadi A, Shabbir Noman
Department of Computing Technologies, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Chennai 603203, India.
Department of Electrical Power Engineering & Mechatronics, Tallinn University of Technology, 19806 Tallinn, Estonia.
Sensors (Basel). 2025 Sep 22;25(18):5924. doi: 10.3390/s25185924.
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) play a major role in various applications, but the main challenge is to maintain security and balanced energy efficiency. Classical routing protocols struggle to achieve both energy efficiency and security because they are more vulnerable to security risks and resource limitations. This paper introduces QSEER, a novel approach that uses quantum technologies to overcome these limitations. QSEER employs quantum-inspired optimization algorithms that leverage superposition and entanglement principles to efficiently explore multiple routing possibilities, thereby identifying energy-efficient paths and reducing redundant transmissions. The proposed protocol enhances the security of data transmission against eavesdropping and tampering by using the principles of quantum mechanics, thus mitigating potential security vulnerabilities. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrated the effectiveness of QSEER in achieving both security and energy efficiency objectives, which achieves 15.1% lower energy consumption compared to state-of-the-art protocols while maintaining 99.8% data integrity under various attack scenarios, extending network lifetime by an average of 42%. These results position QSEER as a significant advancement for next-generation WSN deployments in critical applications such as environmental monitoring, smart infrastructure, and healthcare systems.
无线传感器网络（WSN）在各种应用中发挥着重要作用，但主要挑战是维护安全性和平衡的能源效率。传统路由协议难以同时实现能源效率和安全性，因为它们更容易受到安全风险和资源限制的影响。本文介绍了QSEER，这是一种利用量子技术克服这些限制的新颖方法。QSEER采用受量子启发的优化算法，利用叠加和纠缠原理有效地探索多种路由可能性，从而识别节能路径并减少冗余传输。所提出的协议通过使用量子力学原理增强了数据传输对窃听和篡改的安全性，从而减轻了潜在的安全漏洞。通过广泛的模拟，我们证明了QSEER在实现安全性和能源效率目标方面的有效性，与现有协议相比，其能耗降低了15.1%，同时在各种攻击场景下保持99.8%的数据完整性，平均将网络寿命延长了42%。这些结果使QSEER成为在环境监测、智能基础设施和医疗系统等关键应用中下一代WSN部署的重大进步。
