A Lightweight Cryptography and Fuzzy C-Means Clustering Approach for Energy Efficiency in WSNs and MANETs

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-628-9_11How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Fuzzy C-means Clustering; Lightweight Cryptography (LWC); Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs); Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs); Energy-Efficient Routing; Cluster Heads (CH) selection; Secure Communication; eXtended Tiny Encryption Algorithm (xTEA)

Abstract

Energy usage and security are the two major challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. As the devices in these networks usually have limited power and limited processing capacity, they are more at risk to attacks. In traditional methods such, as clustering and standard cryptography, it often demands a lot of computation and communication, which results in shorten lifetime of the network.

To solve these problems, this paper introduces a secure and energy-efficient routing framework that contains Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering with lightweight cryptography. The use of FCM allows nodes to connect to more than one cluster with different membership levels. This flexibility reduces the need for constant re-clustering and helps spread energy use more evenly across the network. Cluster Heads (CHs) are chosen based on their remaining energy and mobility, this makes the system more stable even when the network topology changes frequently.

In this paper we have proposed lightweight cryptography for wireless ad-hoc networks like MANET and WSN for achieving confidentiality and authenticity during data exchanges between CH to CH and CH to cluster members that is inter-cluster and intra-cluster data communication. The proposed algorithm ensures enhancement in the network lifetime with better throughput, packet delivery ratio, minimal energy consumption and less overhead. According to simulation results, the proposed scheme improves the network lifetime by 38%, reduces energy consumption by 27%, and achieves 12% higher packet delivery ratio compared to similar protocols under similar conditions.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Aman Kumar Raj
AU  - Naghma Khatoon
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/31
TI  - A Lightweight Cryptography and Fuzzy C-Means Clustering Approach for Energy Efficiency in WSNs and MANETs
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Recent Trends in Intelligent Computing, Manufacturing, and Electronics (rTIME 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 107
EP  - 116
SN  - 2352-5401
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-628-9_11
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-628-9_11
ID  - Raj2026
ER  -