Citation: Farooq, M.S.; Idrees, M.;
Rehman, A.U.; Khan, M.Z.; Abunadi,
I.; Assam, M.; Althobaiti, M.M.;
Al-Wesabi, F.N. Formal Modeling
and Improvement in the Random
Path Routing Network Scheme Using
Colored Petri Nets. Appl. Sci. 2022,
12, 1426. https://doi.org/10.3390/
app12031426
Academic Editor: Alvaro
Araujo Pinto
Received: 25 November 2021
Accepted: 20 January 2022
Published: 28 January 2022
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Review
Formal Modeling and Improvement in the Random Path
Routing Network Scheme Using Colored Petri Nets
Muhammad Shoaib Farooq
1
, Muhammad Idrees
2,
*, Attique Ur Rehman
1,3
, Muhammad Zubair Khan
1
,
Ibrahim Abunadi
4
, Muhammad Assam
5
, Maha M. Althobaiti
6
and Fahd N. Al-Wesabi
7,
*
1
Department of Computer Science, School of System and Technology, University of Management and
Technology, Lahore 54000, Pakistan; shoaib.farooq@umt.edu.pk (M.S.F.);
F2020279008@umt.edu.pk (M.Z.K.); attique.rehman@lgu.edu.pk (A.U.R.)
2
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Narowal Campus,
University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore 51600, Pakistan
3
Department of Computer Science, Lahore Garrison University, Lahore 54000, Pakistan
4
Department of Information Systems, Prince Sultan University, P.O. Box No. 66833 Rafha Street,
Riyadh 11586, Saudi Arabia; iabunade@psu.edu.sa
5
College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China;
assam@zju.edu.cn
6
Department of Computer Science, College of Computing and Information Technology,
Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia; maha_m@tu.edu.sa
7
Department of Computer Science, College of Science & Art at Mahayil, King Khalid University,
Abha 62529, Saudi Arabia
* Correspondence: midrees10@uet.edu.pk (M.I.); falwesabi@kku.edu.sa (F.N.A.-W.)
Abstract:
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been applied in networking devices, and a new
problem has emerged called source-location privacy (SLP) in critical security systems. In wireless
sensor networks, hiding the location of the source node from the hackers is known as SLP. The
WSNs have limited battery capacity and low computational ability. Many state-of-the-art protocols
have been proposed to address the SLP problems and other problems such as limited battery
capacity and low computational power. One of the popular protocols is random path routing
(RPR), and in random path routing, the system keeps sending the message randomly along all the
possible paths from a source node to a sink node irrespective of the path’s distance. The problem
arises when the system keeps sending a message via the longest route, resulting because of high
battery usage and computational costs. This research paper presents a novel networking model
referred to as calculated random path routing (CRPR). CRPR first calculates the top three shortest
paths, and then randomly sends a token to any of the top three shortest calculated paths, ensuring
the optimal tradeoff between computational cost and SLP. The proposed methodology includes
the formal modeling of the CRPR in Colored Petri Nets. We have validated and verified the CRPR,
and the results depict the optimal tradeoff.
Keywords:
wireless sensor network; source-location privacy; calculated random path routing; mod-
eling; Petri nets; security system
1. Introduction
One of the major WSN deployment problems is source-location privacy (SPL) [
1
]. SLP
includes the hiding of all source nodes in the network from attackers [
1
]. All the nodes
are present in an open environment, and all the nodes are sending tokens from a source
node to a sink node, so if attackers locate the source node, then the source node is at high
risk. Providing privacy in sensor networks is very complicated because the nodes have low
battery capacity and less computational power [
2
]. WSNs are deployed in a wide range
of domains, such as academia and industry. Lately, the SLP problem has emerged as a
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12, 1426. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12031426 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci
