Securing Next Generation 6G Wireless Networks Through Intelligent Bio-Inspired Routing with Energy Optimization for Enhanced Authentication

Objectives: To develop a novel intelligent routing and energy optimization protocol for 6G-enabled wireless network medium to enhance security and authentication. The proposed protocol will balance the energy utilization across nodes and address the vulnerabilities in WPA2/PSK authentication precisely against man in the middle attacks. Methods: Multi-objective particle swarm optimization is employed for node scheduling where the data packets are to be traveled from source to destination. Continuous Time State Transition probability and a robust route optimization method are utilized to minimize energy consumption and network performance. Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Time-based Key Rotation Mechanism are integrated into MO-PSO to act against security attacks and ensure smooth data transmission during WPA2/PSK authentication. Simulation analysis of this unified architecture is carried out with NSL-KDD datasets that involve high traffic and diverse environmental conditions of 6G WSNs. The performance metrics of MO-PSO with ECC and KRM are evaluated using the NS-3 simulator, and the results are compared against existing energy-efficient and security-based protocols such as EAP-IFBA, BIP-GANs, PSO-IRA, and FW-FHSS. Findings: The novel MO-PSO with ECC and KRM protocol enhances the sensor energy, optimizes the route for end-to-end delivery, and secures WPA2/PSK authentication with the promising results of 8% energy consumption, 95% packet delivery ratio, 6% node failure rate, 0.8 ms latency, 0.02% security breach rate, and 96% optimal route efficiency. Novelty: This study presents a unified and robust authentication framework for routing, energy optimization, WPA2/PSK authentication, and secured data transmission to enable high compatibility with next-generation wireless sensor networks to address attacks, node failure, security breaches, route delay, and high energy consumption. Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks, 6G Networking, Energy Optimization, Authentication, Particle Swarm Optimization