We study the potential threat for virus spread in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Using epidemic theory, we proposed a new model, called Susceptible-Infective-Recovered with Maintenance (SIR-M), to characterize the dynamics of the virus spread process from a single node to the entire network. By introducing a maintenance mechanism in the sleep mode of WSNs, the SIR-M model can improve the network's anti-virus capability and enable the network to adapt flexibly to different types of viruses, without incurring additional computational or signaling overhead. The proposed model can capture both the spatial and temporal dynamics of the virus spread process. We derive explicit analytical solutions for the model and discuss some practical applications of interest. Extensive numerical results are presented to validate our analysis. The proposed model is applicable to the design and analysis of information propagation mechanisms in communication networks.
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