## 4 Simulation Setup and Experimental Results
### Throughput  
Throughput is a significant metric generally expressed as the data transmitted over the sensor network. We consider that the source nodes generate a random number of data packets in ranges that can lead to delay/latency and can affect the throughput of the network. We developed several simulation scenarios to measure our proposed SDAAA approach's maximum throughput and compared it with contending approaches such as SD, EEHA, HAS, IIF, and RHC. Based on the simulation results, we observed that when time increases, the throughput performance of all approaches remains variable; see graphs in Figure 3.  
However, the throughput performance of our proposed approach was better than that of the contending approaches. Based on the graphs in Figures 4-6, our proposed SDAAA approach's throughput performance is much better than other competing approaches like SD, EEHA, HAS, IIF, and RHC. In Figure 3, the approximate throughput performance of our proposed SDAAA approach is 422 kb/s, while other competing approaches have 361-406 kb/s.  
In Figure 4, the average throughput performance of our proposed SDAAA approach was 44 kb/s. In contrast, the performance of competing approaches like SD, EEHA, HAS,  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l} \hline \hline
**Used Parameters** & **Detail of Parameters** \\ \hline Network topology & 1300 \(\times\) 1300 m\({}^{2}\) \\ Total sensors & 540 \\ Node’s transmission range & 40 m \\ Node’s sensing range & 30 m \\ The initial energy of a node & 5 joules \\ Bandwidth of node & 50 kb/s \\ Simulation time/rounds & 36 min \\ Data packet size & 256 bytes \\ Initial pause time & 15 s \\ Total hops & 22 \\ Proposed and contending aggregation methods & SDAAA, SD, EEHA, HAS, IIF, and RHC \\ Buffering capacity & 50-packet buffering capacity at each node \\ Mobility (speed of the nodes) & 0 m/s to 15 m/s \\ Base station location & (0, 820) \\ Power intensity & \(-\)14 dBm to 13 dBm. \\ Rx energy & 13.5 mW \\ Tx energy & 15 mW \\ Routing protocol & Hop-by-hop \\ Medium access control protocol & IEEE 802.15.4 cluster-based MAC \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Simulation parameters for the proposed SDAAA protocol.  
IIF, and RHC protocols was 415-443 kb/s with several increased sensor nodes. As depicted in the graph in Figure 5, we generated 5% malicious nodes to confirm the effectiveness of our approach and other competing approaches. The results show that our proposed SDAAA approach had a 426.5 kb/s throughput performance, which indicates less latency, compared with the competing approaches like SD, EEHA, HAS, IIF, and RHC, which have 405-418 kb/s, indicating high latency. We generated 10% malicious data, as shown in Figure 6. The number of malicious nodes increased, affecting the throughput performance of competing approaches. However, our proposed SDAAA approach is promising. Our proposed SDAAA approach reached 424.5, while other contending approaches like SD, EEHA, HAS, IIF, and RHC reached 402-409 kb/s. The reason for better throughput in our method is the lightweight authentication and authorization process that handles the malicious node's activities effectively.