## 1 Introduction
In this scenario, the hunter plays the role of the attacker who attacks the network from the base station (BS) and backtracks the signals to reach the source of information. The term \"source node\" refers to a sensor node that recognizes an asset (in this case, an animal) and communicates the asset information to the BS utilizing mesh-type routing. Similar to this, the replacement of a dead node in the network is extremely difficult or impossible since the sensor nodes are deployed in a hostile and harsh environment. Therefore, when developing a new routing protocol, the network lifetime (NLT) and privacy should be given careful consideration since prolonging network lifetime enables long-term asset monitoring. The current SLP solutions in the literature can be categorized broadly into two distinct categories, namely, phantom routing (random walk)-based SLP and fake packets/fake source-based SLP techniques [23; 24]. In the former case, random walk techniques are employed to randomize the routing paths, and in the later scenarios, dummy packets or fake sources are employed to introduce anonymity and unobservability features to the original traffic. These approaches aim to obfuscate the attacker. The approach suggested by [PERSON] et al. in [22] improved the safety period by utilizing both phantom nodes and fake sources by using a tree-based diversionary routing approach with diversionary routes as its branches. The fake nodes are employed at the end of diversionary pathways to further confuse an attacker. [PERSON] et al. in [PERSON] et al. (2018) proposed a scheme that employs multiple sinks and switches the packet destination at random with each transmission to trick the attacker. A cloud-shaped fake hotspot was created to introduce fake packets into the network to confuse the adversary and increase privacy. The intermediate node was utilized to make the routing path more unpredictable. In [PERSON] et al. (2018), researchers suggested a technique that utilized phantom nodes and fake packets to enhance privacy without compromising NLT. This strategy takes neighbor nodes' weight into account while choosing the next hop to relay the packet, in contrast to the previous ones. The work in [PERSON] et al. (2018) suggested a fake packet/fake sources-based SLP scheme which aimed at enhancing the safety period while minimizing packet transmission latency. It can be noted that these schemes may provide enhanced privacy; however, employing fake sources may affect the network's lifetime since the fake sources keep sending fake packets to the network. The greater the frequency with which specific nodes within the network transmit and receive fake packets, the more their energy is decreased, consequently exerting a detrimental impact on the overall network's lifetime. Our research work focuses on the use of random walk-based routing techniques and their variants to provide SLP in WSNs, as fake packets/fake source approaches are energy-expensive and are not advisable for resource-constrained sensor networks. Various random walk SLP schemes have been proposed in the literature; authors in [PERSON] et al. (2018) proposed a novel random walk-based scheme that involves the segmentation of the network into distinct sectors. The selection of a particular sector is determined at random for every new packet originating from the source node. Subsequently, these packets proceed towards their designated sector, ultimately making their way to the base station (BS). The article [PERSON] et al. (2018) introduced a phantom nodes-based scheme. In this scheme, the source node selects a predefined set of network nodes to act as phantom nodes. The packets originating from the source node follow a path through these selected phantom nodes to reach the ring node and, subsequently, to be sent to the base station (BS). Another random walk-based solution was suggested by [PERSON] et al. in [PERSON] et al. (2018).