Location-Aware Dynamic Session-Key Management for Grid-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Security is a critical issue for sensor networks used in hostile environments. When wireless sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network are distributed in an insecure hostile environment, the sensor nodes must be protected: a secret key must be used to protect the nodes transmitting messages. If the nodes are not protected and become compromised, many types of attacks against the network may result. Such is the case with existing schemes, which are vulnerable to attacks because they mostly provide a hop-by-hop paradigm, which is insufficient to defend against known attacks. We propose a location-aware dynamic session-key management protocol for grid-based wireless sensor networks. The proposed protocol improves the security of a secret key. The proposed scheme also includes a key that is dynamically updated. This dynamic update can lower the probability of the key being guessed correctly. Thus currently known attacks can be defended. By utilizing the local information, the proposed scheme can also limit the flooding region in order to reduce the energy that is consumed in discovering routing paths

Group-Based Key Management Protocol for Energy Efficiency in Long-Lived and Large-Scale Distributed Sensor Networks

As wireless sensor networks grow, so does the need for effective security mechanisms. We propose a cryptographic key-management protocol, called energy-efficient key-management (EEKM) protocol. Using a location-based group key scheme, the protocol supports the revocation of compromised nodes and energy-efficient rekeying. The design is motivated by the observation that unicast-based rekeying does not meet the security requirements of periodic rekeying in long-lived wireless sensor networks. EEKM supports broadcast-based rekeying for low-energy key management and high resilience. In addition, to match the increasing complexity of encryption keys, the protocol uses a dynamic composition key scheme. EEKM also provides group-management protocols for secure group communication. We analyzed the energy efficiency and security of EEKM and compared it to other key-management protocols using a network simulator

Adaptive Multipath Key Reinforcement for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks

AbstractEnergy Harvesting - Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs) constitute systems of networked sensing nodes that are capable of extracting energy from the environment and that use the harvested energy to operate in a sustainable state. Sustainability, seen as design goal, has a significant impact on the design of the security protocols for such networks, as the nodes have to adapt and optimize their behaviour according to the available energy. Traditional key management schemes do not take energy into account, making them not suitable for EH-WSNs. In this paper we propose a new multipath key reinforcement scheme specifically designed for EH-WSNs. The proposed scheme allows each node to take into consideration and adapt to the amount of energy available in the system. In particular, we present two approaches, one static and one fully dynamic, and we discuss some experimental results

Efficient Key Generation for Dynamic Blom's Scheme

The need for totally secure communication between the nodes in a network has led to many key distribution schemes. Blom's scheme is a prominent key exchange protocol used for sensor and wireless networks, but its shortcomings include large computation overhead and memory cost. The main goal of our work is to find ways to overcome the shortcomings of the existing Blom Scheme and make it more efficient. In this thesis, we propose an efficient key management scheme by generating new public and private keys. We also focus on making Blom's scheme, dynamic by randomly changing the secret key that is generated by the base station and also using mesh array for matrix multiplication for reducing the computation overhead.Computer Scienc

Key Management Scheme for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are infrastructure-less and resource constraint networks composed of many sensor nodes. These sensors collect information from the area of sense and deliver that information to the base station. WSNs are usually deployed in unattended environment and like other networks need to be secured. In order to secure WSNs, firstly cryptography keys must be distributed in a secure and robust way. Key management problem is rapidly studied in the static WSNs, but it has not been studied thoroughly in mobile (or dynamic) WSNs. When mobility is introduced within WSNs, many challenges and new characteristics appear in the security model. Security requirements for mobile WSNs include authentication, confidentiality, and integrity. The key management scheme represents the corner stone for achieving security services. In this paper, we propose a key management scheme for mobile WSNs which based on track-sector clustering in the roaming area. The proposed system is relying on symmetric cryptography for achieving its goals. The paper represents a work-in-progress report on our advance in the development of this proposal

Signal processing for distributed nodes in smart networks

With increasing environmental concern for energy conservation and mitigating climate change, next generation smart networks are bound to provide improved performance in terms of security, reliability, and energy efficiency. For instance, future smart networks will work in highly complex and dynamic environments and will have distributed nodes that need to interact with each other and may also interact with an energy provider in order to improve their performance. In this context, advanced signal processing tools such as game theory and distributed transmit beamforming can yield tremendous performance gains in terms of energy efficiency for demand management and signal trans-mission in smart networks. The central theme of this dissertation is the modeling of energy usage behavior of self-seeking distributed nodes in smart networks. The thesis mainly looks into two key areas of smart networks: 1) smart grid networks and 2) wireless sensor networks, and contains: an analytical framework of the economics of electric vehicle charging in smart grids in an energy constrained environment; a study of a consumer-centric energy management scheme for encouraging the consumers in a smart grid to voluntarily take part in energy management; an outage management scheme for efficiently curtailing energy from the consumers in smart grids in the event of a power outage; a comprehensive study of power control of sensors in a wireless sensor network using game theory and distributed transmit beamforming; and finally, an energy aware distributed transmit beamfoming technique for long distance signal transmission in a wireless sensor network. This thesis addresses the challenges of modeling the energy usage behavior of distributed nodes through studying the propriety of energy users in smart networks, 1) by capturing the interactions between the energy users and energy provider in smart grids using non-cooperative Stackelberg and generalized Nash games, and showing that the socially optimal energy management for users can be achieved at the solution of the games, and 2) by studying the power control of sensors in wireless sensor networks, using a non-cooperative Nash game and distributed transmit beamforming that demonstrates significant transmit energy savings for the sensors. To foster energy efficient transmission, the thesis also studies a distributed transmit beamforming technique that does not require any channel state information for long distance signal transmission in sensor networks. The contributions of this dissertation are enhanced by proposing suitable system models and appropriate signal processing techniques. These models and techniques can capture the different cost-benefit tradeoffs that exist in these networks. All the proposed schemes in this dissertation are shown to have significant performance improvement when compared with existing solutions. The work in this thesis demonstrates that modeling power usage behavior of distributed nodes in smart networks is both possible and beneficial for increasing the energy efficiency of these networks

An Authentication Protocol for Future Sensor Networks

Authentication is one of the essential security services in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for ensuring secure data sessions. Sensor node authentication ensures the confidentiality and validity of data collected by the sensor node, whereas user authentication guarantees that only legitimate users can access the sensor data. In a mobile WSN, sensor and user nodes move across the network and exchange data with multiple nodes, thus experiencing the authentication process multiple times. The integration of WSNs with Internet of Things (IoT) brings forth a new kind of WSN architecture along with stricter security requirements; for instance, a sensor node or a user node may need to establish multiple concurrent secure data sessions. With concurrent data sessions, the frequency of the re-authentication process increases in proportion to the number of concurrent connections, which makes the security issue even more challenging. The currently available authentication protocols were designed for the autonomous WSN and do not account for the above requirements. In this paper, we present a novel, lightweight and efficient key exchange and authentication protocol suite called the Secure Mobile Sensor Network (SMSN) Authentication Protocol. In the SMSN a mobile node goes through an initial authentication procedure and receives a re-authentication ticket from the base station. Later a mobile node can use this re-authentication ticket when establishing multiple data exchange sessions and/or when moving across the network. This scheme reduces the communication and computational complexity of the authentication process. We proved the strength of our protocol with rigorous security analysis and simulated the SMSN and previously proposed schemes in an automated protocol verifier tool. Finally, we compared the computational complexity and communication cost against well-known authentication protocols.Comment: This article is accepted for the publication in "Sensors" journal. 29 pages, 15 figure