Optimal Control of Malware Spreading Model with Tracing and Patching in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which emerge from an un-attended environment monitoring, are deployed for monitoring purposes in different environments. But, WSNs suffer from vulnerable malware to propagate via exploiting message exchange among the sensor nodes. To draw attention to this issue, this paper investigates an optimal control strategy to reduce the spread of malware in wireless sensor networks. A node-based epidemic model Susceptible-Infected-Traced-Patched-Susceptible is analyzed. The optimal control strategies are analytically investigated. The proposed optimal strategy achieves a low level of infections at a low cost. Finally, numerical illustrations are presented to show the spread of malware through infected nodes which can be effectively suppressed by adopting the suitable optimal control strategy.