# A Survey on Energy Drainage Attacks and Countermeasures in Wireless Sensor Networks
###### Abstract  
Owing to limited resources, implementing conventional security components in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) rather than wireless networks is difficult. Because most sensor nodes are typically powered by batteries, the battery power should be sufficiently long to prevent the shortening of the network lifetime. Therefore, many studies have focused on detecting and avoiding energy drainage attacks in WSNs. However, a survey paper has yet to be published for energy drain attacks in WSNs since 2019. Therefore, we present a novel comprehensive survey paper for energy drainage attacks in WSNs. First, we address an overview of WSNs and their security issues. Next, we explain the methodology for this study and explain the existing approaches for energy drainage attacks in layered architectures. Based on the results of this analysis, open issues and further research directions are presented.  
energy drain attack; security; wireless sensor networks (WSNs); battery 2025 202  
Compared with a conventional computing platform, sensor nodes exhibit considerable advantages because of their low installation costs and flexible system configurations. In contrast, because of the limited capability of components, a sensor node has high latency in communication and low computing speeds. Furthermore, sensor nodes are vulnerable to various threats and attacks because they are deployed in unattended and unprotected environments with limited infrastructure. Thus, security is a primary challenge and attracts considerable research interest. Numerous studies have comprehensively discussed security issues and WSN technologies. Consequently, various possible attacks at each layer of the communication protocol stack and their possible countermeasures have been identified in terms of constraints and security requirements.  
However, a comprehensive review study of energy drain attacks on WSNs is yet to be conducted. Furthermore, the types of detection mechanisms have been described; however, the types of attack detection have not been elucidated. Because most sensor nodes operate with non-rechargeable batteries, this attack causes a severe operational problem: node failure. WSN node faults are typically caused by the failure of modules, enemy attacks, battery power depletion, and the node being beyond the communication range of the entire network. Sequentially, a node failure partitions networks and subsequently shortens network lifetime. Although several energy harvesting technologies have been proposed to extend the network lifetime, the prevention of this attack is prioritized.  
To address the mentioned problem, we proposed a novel survey paper dealing with energy drain attacks in WSN in this study. We reviewed the types of possible attacks for energy consumption in detail and provided security solutions in each layer. Table 1 lists the main acronyms used in this paper.  
The contributions of this study are as follows:  
* Research challenges for security in WSNs: To address security issues and research challenges, we reviewed surveys and compared them.
* Investigation for energy drain attack in WSNs: Specifically, we focused on energy drain attacks and countermeasures against this type of attack in the aspects of layers. In particular, we focused on and analyzed energy drainage attacks by denial of service (DoS) attacks.
* Further research challenges: We discussed the open research challenges for energy drainage attacks, including new network architecture and the use of machine learning (ML).  
The paper is organized as follows. We provide background and motivation for this review paper in Section 1. Security issues and specific attacks targeting WSNs are followed in the next section. In Section 3, we investigate energy drain attacks from the perspective of each layer for WSNs. We present open research challenges and discuss them in the Section 4. Finally, we conclude and suggest further work.  
Figure 1: Components on a sensor node.