2,273 research outputs found
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
A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks
In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs
A smartwater metering deployment based on the fog computing paradigm
In this paper, we look into smart water metering infrastructures that enable continuous, on-demand and bidirectional data exchange between metering devices, water flow equipment, utilities and end-users. We focus on the design, development and deployment of such infrastructures as part of larger, smart city, infrastructures. Until now, such critical smart city infrastructures have been developed following a cloud-centric paradigm where all the data are collected and processed centrally using cloud services to create real business value. Cloud-centric approaches need to address several performance issues at all levels of the network, as massive metering datasets are transferred to distant machine clouds while respecting issues like security and data privacy. Our solution uses the fog computing paradigm to provide a system where the computational resources already available throughout the network infrastructure are utilized to facilitate greatly the analysis of fine-grained water consumption data collected by the smart meters, thus significantly reducing the overall load to network and cloud resources. Details of the system's design are presented along with a pilot deployment in a real-world environment. The performance of the system is evaluated in terms of network utilization and computational performance. Our findings indicate that the fog computing paradigm can be applied to a smart grid deployment to reduce effectively the data volume exchanged between the different layers of the architecture and provide better overall computational, security and privacy capabilities to the system
Feasibility Evaluation of a Vibration-Based Leak Detection Technique for Sustainable Water Distribution Pipeline System Monitoring
Conventional water pipeline leak-detection surveys employ labor-intensive acoustic techniques, which are usually expensive and less useful for continuous monitoring of distribution pipelines. Based on a comprehensive review of literature and available commercial products, it has been recognized that despite previous studies and products attempting to address the limitations of the conventional surveys by proposing and evaluating a myriad of leak-detection techniques (LDTs), they lacked extensive validation on complex looped systems. Additionally, they offer limited compatibility with some pipe materials such as those made of plastic and may even fail to distinguish leaks from other system disturbances. A novel LDT that addresses some of these limitations is developed and evaluated in the current study using an experimental set-up that is representative of a real-world pipeline system and made of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) pipe. The studied LDT requires continuous monitoring of the change in the cross spectral density of surface vibration measured at discrete locations along the pipeline. This vibration-based LDT was hypothesized to be capable of not only detecting the onset of leakage, but also determining its relative severity in complex pipeline systems. Findings based on a two-phase, controlled experimental testing revealed that the proposed LDT is capable of detecting leakages and estimating their relative severities in a real-size, multi-looped pipeline system that is comprised of multiple joints, bends and pipes of multiple sizes. Furthermore, the sustainability merits of the proposed LDT for a representative application scenario are estimated. Specifically, life cycle costs and energy consumption for monitoring the large diameter pipelines in the water distribution system of the Charleston peninsula region in South Carolina are estimated by developing conceptual prototypes of the sensing, communication and computation schemes for practically employing the proposed LDT. The prototype designs are informed by the knowledge derived from the two-phase experimental testing campaign. Overall, the proposed study contributes to the body of knowledge on water pipeline leak detection, specifically to non-intrusive vibration-based monitoring, applications on plastic pipelines, and smart and sustainable network-wide continuous monitoring schemes
Host mobility key management in dynamic secure group communication
The key management has a fundamental role in securing group communications taking place over vast and unprotected networks. It is concerned with the distribution and update of the keying materials whenever any changes occur in the group membership. Wireless mobile environments enable members to move freely within the networks, which causes more difficulty to design efficient and scalable key management protocols. This is partly because both member location dynamic and group membership dynamic must be managed concurrently, which may lead to significant rekeying overhead. This paper presents a hierarchical group key management scheme taking the mobility of members into consideration intended for wireless mobile environments. The proposed scheme supports the mobility of members across wireless mobile environments while remaining in the group session with minimum rekeying transmission overhead. Furthermore, the proposed scheme alleviates 1-affect-n phenomenon, single point of failure, and signaling load caused by moving members at the core network. Simulation results shows that the scheme surpasses other existing efforts in terms of communication overhead and affected members. The security requirements studies also show the backward and forward secrecy is preserved in the proposed scheme even though the members move between areas
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