Practical security scheme design for resource-constrained wireless networks

The implementation of ubiquitous computing (or pervasive computing) can leverage various types of resource-constrained wireless networks such as wireless sensor networks and wireless personal area networks. These resource-constrained wireless networks are vulnerable to many malicious attacks that often cause leakage, alteration and destruction of critical information due to the insecurity of wireless communication and the tampers of devices. Meanwhile, the constraints of resources, the lack of centralized management, and the demands of mobility of these networks often make traditional security mechanisms inefficient or infeasible. So, the resource-constrained wireless networks pose new challenges for information assurance and call for practical, efficient and effective solutions. In this research, we focus on wireless sensor networks and aim at enhancing confidentiality, authenticity, availability and integrity, for wireless sensor networks. Particularly, we identify three important problems as our research targets: (1) key management for wireless sensor networks (for confidentiality), (2) filtering false data injection and DoS attacks in wireless sensor networks (for authenticity and availability), and (3) secure network coding (for integrity). We investigate a diversity of malicious attacks against wireless sensor networks and design a number of practical schemes for establishing pairwise keys between sensor nodes, filtering false data injection and DoS attacks, and securing network coding against pollution attacks for wireless sensor networks. Our contributions from this research are fourfold: (1) We give a taxonomy of malicious attacks for wireless sensor networks. (2) We design a group-based key management scheme using deployment knowledge for wireless sensor networks to establish pair-wise keys between sensor nodes. (3) We propose an en-route scheme for filtering false data injection and DoS attacks in wireless sensor networks. (4) We present two efficient schemes for securing normal and XOR network coding against pollution attacks. Simulation and experimental results show that our solutions outperform existing ones and are suitable for resource-constrained wireless sensor networks in terms of computation overhead, communication cost, memory requirement, and so on

Game Theory-Based Cooperation for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks: Taxonomy, Review, Research Challenges and Directions.

Exploring and monitoring the underwater world using underwater sensors is drawing a lot of attention these days. In this field cooperation between acoustic sensor nodes has been a critical problem due to the challenging features such as acoustic channel failure (sound signal), long propagation delay of acoustic signal, limited bandwidth and loss of connectivity. There are several proposed methods to improve cooperation between the nodes by incorporating information/game theory in the node's cooperation. However, there is a need to classify the existing works and demonstrate their performance in addressing the cooperation issue. In this paper, we have conducted a review to investigate various factors affecting cooperation in underwater acoustic sensor networks. We study various cooperation techniques used for underwater acoustic sensor networks from different perspectives, with a concentration on communication reliability, energy consumption, and security and present a taxonomy for underwater cooperation. Moreover, we further review how the game theory can be applied to make the nodes cooperate with each other. We further analyze different cooperative game methods, where their performance on different metrics is compared. Finally, open issues and future research direction in underwater acoustic sensor networks are highlighted

Energy aware performance evaluation of WSNs

Distributed sensor networks have been discussed for more than 30 years, but the vision of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has been brought into reality only by the rapid advancements in the areas of sensor design, information technologies, and wireless networks that have paved the way for the proliferation of WSNs. The unique characteristics of sensor networks introduce new challenges, amongst which prolonging the sensor lifetime is the most important. Energy-efficient solutions are required for each aspect of WSN design to deliver the potential advantages of the WSN phenomenon, hence in both existing and future solutions for WSNs, energy efficiency is a grand challenge. The main contribution of this thesis is to present an approach considering the collaborative nature of WSNs and its correlation characteristics, providing a tool which considers issues from physical to application layer together as entities to enable the framework which facilitates the performance evaluation of WSNs. The simulation approach considered provides a clear separation of concerns amongst software architecture of the applications, the hardware configuration and the WSN deployment unlike the existing tools for evaluation. The reuse of models across projects and organizations is also promoted while realistic WSN lifetime estimations and performance evaluations are possible in attempts of improving performance and maximizing the lifetime of the network. In this study, simulations are carried out with careful assumptions for various layers taking into account the real time characteristics of WSN. The sensitivity of WSN systems are mainly due to their fragile nature when energy consumption is considered. The case studies presented demonstrate the importance of various parameters considered in this study. Simulation-based studies are presented, taking into account the realistic settings from each layer of the protocol stack. Physical environment is considered as well. The performance of the layered protocol stack in realistic settings reveals several important interactions between different layers. These interactions are especially important for the design of WSNs in terms of maximizing the lifetime of the network

Smart Wireless Sensor Networks

The recent development of communication and sensor technology results in the growth of a new attractive and challenging area - wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A wireless sensor network which consists of a large number of sensor nodes is deployed in environmental fields to serve various applications. Facilitated with the ability of wireless communication and intelligent computation, these nodes become smart sensors which do not only perceive ambient physical parameters but also be able to process information, cooperate with each other and self-organize into the network. These new features assist the sensor nodes as well as the network to operate more efficiently in terms of both data acquisition and energy consumption. Special purposes of the applications require design and operation of WSNs different from conventional networks such as the internet. The network design must take into account of the objectives of specific applications. The nature of deployed environment must be considered. The limited of sensor nodes� resources such as memory, computational ability, communication bandwidth and energy source are the challenges in network design. A smart wireless sensor network must be able to deal with these constraints as well as to guarantee the connectivity, coverage, reliability and security of network's operation for a maximized lifetime. This book discusses various aspects of designing such smart wireless sensor networks. Main topics includes: design methodologies, network protocols and algorithms, quality of service management, coverage optimization, time synchronization and security techniques for sensor networks

Distributed control of coded networks

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-101).The introduction of network coding has the potential to revolutionize the way people operate networks. For the benefits of network coding to be realized, distributed solutions are needed for various network problems. In this work, we look at three aspects of distributed control of coded networks. The first one is distributed algorithms for establishing minimum-cost multicast connections in coded networks. The subgraph optimization problem can be viewed as an linear optimization problem, and we look at algorithms that solve this problem for both static and dynamic multicasts. For static multicast, we present decentralized dual subgradient algorithms to find the min-cost subgraph. Due to the special structure of the network coding problem, we can recover a feasible primal solution after each iteration, and also derive theoretical bounds on the convergence rate in both the dual and the primal spaces. In addition, we propose heuristics to further improve our algorithm, and demonstrate through simulations that the distributed algorithm converges to the optimal subgraph quickly and is robust against network topology changes. For dynamic multicast, we introduce two types of rearrangements, link rearrangement and code rearrangement, to characterize disturbances to users. We present algorithms to solve the online network coding problem, and demonstrate through simulations that the algorithms can adapt to changing demands of the multicast group while minimizing disturbances to existing users.(cont.) The second part of our work focuses on analysis of COPE, a distributed opportunistic network coding system for wireless mesh networks. Experiments have shown that COPE can improve network throughput significantly, but current theoretical analysis fails to fully explain this performance. We argue that the key factor that shapes COPE's performance curve is the interaction between COPE and the MAC protocol. We also propose a simple modification to COPE that can further increase the network throughput. Finally, we study network coding for content distribution in peer-to-peer networks. Such systems can improve the speed of downloads and the robustness of the systems. However, they are very vulnerable to Byzantine attacks, and we need to have a signature scheme that allows nodes to check the validity of a packet without decoding. In this work, we propose such a signature scheme for network coding. Our scheme makes use of the linearity property of the packets in a coded system, and allows nodes to check the integrity of the packets received easily. We show that the proposed scheme is secure, and its overhead is negligible for large files.by Fang Zhao.Ph.D

IoT for measurements and measurements for IoT

The thesis is framed in the broad strand of the Internet of Things, providing two parallel paths. On one hand, it deals with the identification of operational scenarios in which the IoT paradigm could be innovative and preferable to pre-existing solutions, discussing in detail a couple of applications. On the other hand, the thesis presents methodologies to assess the performance of technologies and related enabling protocols for IoT systems, focusing mainly on metrics and parameters related to the functioning of the physical layer of the systems

Kablosuz sensör ağlarinda yönlü antenlerle enerji̇ veri̇mli̇ yönlendi̇rme

Without measurements, sustainable development effort can not progress in the right direction. Wireless sensor networks are vital for monitoring in real time and making accurate measurements for such an endeavor. However small energy storage in the sensors can become a bottleneck if the wireless sensor network is not optimized at the hardware and software level. Directional antennas are such optimization technologies at the hardware level. They have advantages over the omnidirectional antennas, such as high gain, less interference, longer transmission range, and less power consumption. In wireless sensor networks, most of the energy is consumed for communication. Considering the limited energy in small scale batteries of the sensors, energy efficient (aware) routing, is one of the most important software optimization techniques. The main goal of the technique is to improve the lifetime of the wireless sensor networks. In the light of these observations, it is desirable to do a coupled design of directional antennas with network software, for fully exploiting the advantages offered by directional antenna technology. In this thesis, the possibilities of doing such integrated design are surveyed and improvements are suggested. The design of the proposed microstrip patch antenna array is discussed and the performance characteristics are assessed through simulations. In the benchmarks, the proposed routing method showed improvements in energy usage compared to the existing approaches.Ölçümler olmadan sürdürülebilir kalkınma çabaları doğru yönde ilerleyemez. Bu tür çabalar için, kablosuz sensör ağları, gerçek zamanlı olarak izleme ve kesin ölçümler yapmak için vazgeçilemez unsurdur. Ancak, sensör ağı, donanım ve yazılım düzeylerinde optimize edilmemişse, sensörlerde enerji yetersizliği görülebilinir. Yönlü antenler, donanım düzeyinde uygulanan optimizasyon teknolojilerinden biri olmakla birlikte, çok yönlü antenlerden farklı olarak, yüksek kazanç, daha az parazit, daha uzun iletim mesafesi ve daha az güç tüketimi sağlarlar. Kablosuz sensör ağlarında enerjinin çoğu iletişim için tüketilir. Sensörlerdeki limitli enerjili küçük ölçekli piller göz önüne alındığında, yazılım düzeyindeki önemli metodlardan biri olan enerji verimli (duyarlı) yönlendirme protokolü, kablosuz sensör ağının genel enerji kullanımını optimize etmek ve ömrünü uzatmak için gereklidir. Bu gözlemlerin ışığında, yönlü anten teknolojisinin sunduğu potansiyel avantajlardan tam olarak yararlanmak için, yönlü antenlerin ağ yazılımıyla birlikte entegre tasarımını yapmak arzu edilir. Bu tezde, böyle bir entegre tasarımın yapılma olasılıkları araştırılmış ve iyileştirmeler önerilmiştir. Tezde, küçük şeritli yamalı anten dizisinin tasarımı tartışılmış ve performans karakteristikleri simulasyonlarla ölçülmüştür. Önerilen yönlendirme algoritması, diğer yönlendirme algoritmaları ile karşılaştırıldığında, enerji kullanımında iyileştirmeler göstermiştirM.S. - Master of Scienc

Wireless Sensor Networks

The aim of this book is to present few important issues of WSNs, from the application, design and technology points of view. The book highlights power efficient design issues related to wireless sensor networks, the existing WSN applications, and discusses the research efforts being undertaken in this field which put the reader in good pace to be able to understand more advanced research and make a contribution in this field for themselves. It is believed that this book serves as a comprehensive reference for graduate and undergraduate senior students who seek to learn latest development in wireless sensor networks