Wireless ad-hoc networks (WANESTs) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are typically de-centralized in nature with minimal pre-reliance on the network architecture. They are being extensively used for diverse applications such as military and defense, industrial automation, disaster management etc. Such networks generally are generally limited by their resources of data processing and memory due to large scale deployment and cost. One of the major challenges which WANETs and WSNs face is the possibility of data breach and security. Due to the limitations of memory and processing power, sophisticated encryption algorithms are often infeasible to be implemented for such networks in time critical applications. This poses a serious threat to the data transmission in the network. The way around the problem is the implementation of physical layer security (PLS) approaches, which can alleviate the issue. In this paper, an approach based on the generation of pseudo-noise sequences (PN Sequences) has been proposed so as to secure the data transfer. An adaptive clustering mechanism based on residual energy has also been proposed. The performance metrics of the proposed approach have been chosen as the bit error rate (BER) and the outage of the system. It has been shown that as the spreading factor increases, the BER of the system also increases thereby increasing the outage of the system which is a clear indication of the trade-off between the security and the reliability of the system.

Wireless ad-hoc networks (WANESTs) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) Physical Layer Security Bit Error Rate (BER) Outage Frequency Hopping.