A Survey on Wireless Sensor Network Security

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently attracted a lot of interest in the research community due their wide range of applications. Due to distributed nature of these networks and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their proper functioning. This problem is more critical if the network is deployed for some mission-critical applications such as in a tactical battlefield. Random failure of nodes is also very likely in real-life deployment scenarios. Due to resource constraints in the sensor nodes, traditional security mechanisms with large overhead of computation and communication are infeasible in WSNs. Security in sensor networks is, therefore, a particularly challenging task. This paper discusses the current state of the art in security mechanisms for WSNs. Various types of attacks are discussed and their countermeasures presented. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey

This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols, user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed, use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are some text overlaps with the previous submissio

Energy efficient chain based routing protocol for deterministic node deployment in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of small sensor devices, which are connected wirelessly for sensing and delivering specific data to Base Station (BS). Routing protocols in WSN becomes an active area for both researchers and industrial, due to its responsibility for delivering data, extending network lifetime, reducing the delay and saving the node’s energy. According to hierarchical approach, chain base routing protocol is a promising type that can prolong the network lifetime and decrease the energy consumption. However, it is still suffering from long/single chain impacts such as delay, data redundancy, distance between the neighbors, chain head (CH) energy consumption and bottleneck. This research proposes a Deterministic Chain-Based Routing Protocol (DCBRP) for uniform nodes deployment, which consists of Backbone Construction Mechanism (BCM), Chain Heads Selection mechanism (CHS) and Next Hop Connection mechanism (NHC). BCM is responsible for chain construction by using multi chain concept, so it will divide the network to specific number of clusters depending on the number of columns. While, CHS is answerable on the number of chain heads and CH nodes selection based on their ability for data delivery. On the other hand, NHC is responsible for next hop connection in each row based on the energy and distance between the nodes to eliminate the weak nodes to be in the main chain. Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) is used to simulate DCBRP and it is evaluated with the closest routing protocols in the deterministic deployment in WSN, which are Chain-Cluster Mixed protocol (CCM) and Two Stage Chain based Protocol (TSCP). The results show that DCBRP outperforms CCM and TSCP in terms of end to end delay, CH energy consumption, overall energy consumption, network lifetime and energy*delay metrics. DCBRP or one of its mechanisms helps WSN applications by extending the sensor nodes lifetime and saving the energy for sensing purposes as long as possible

REISCH: incorporating lightweight and reliable algorithms into healthcare applications of WSNs

Healthcare institutions require advanced technology to collect patients' data accurately and continuously. The tradition technologies still suffer from two problems: performance and security efficiency. The existing research has serious drawbacks when using public-key mechanisms such as digital signature algorithms. In this paper, we propose Reliable and Efficient Integrity Scheme for Data Collection in HWSN (REISCH) to alleviate these problems by using secure and lightweight signature algorithms. The results of the performance analysis indicate that our scheme provides high efficiency in data integration between sensors and server (saves more than 24% of alive sensors compared to traditional algorithms). Additionally, we use Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) to validate the security procedures in our scheme. Security analysis results confirm that REISCH is safe against some well-known attacks

Achievable Secrecy Rates of an Energy Harvesting Device

The secrecy rate represents the amount of information per unit time that can be securely sent on a communication link. In this work, we investigate the achievable secrecy rates in an energy harvesting communication system composed of a transmitter, a receiver and a malicious eavesdropper. In particular, because of the energy constraints and the channel conditions, it is important to understand when a device should transmit and to optimize how much power should be used in order to improve security. Both full knowledge and partial knowledge of the channel are considered under a Nakagami fading scenario. We show that high secrecy rates can be obtained only with power and coding rate adaptation. Moreover, we highlight the importance of optimally dividing the transmission power in the frequency domain, and note that the optimal scheme provides high gains in secrecy rate over the uniform power splitting case. Analytically, we explain how to find the optimal policy and prove some of its properties. In our numerical evaluation, we discuss how the maximum achievable secrecy rate changes according to the various system parameters. Furthermore, we discuss the effects of a finite battery on the system performance and note that, in order to achieve high secrecy rates, it is not necessary to use very large batteries.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (Mar. 2016

Strengths and Weaknesses of Prominent Data Dissemination Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks

Data dissemination is the most significant task in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). From the bootstrapping stage to the full functioning stage, a WSN must disseminate data in various patterns like from the sink to node, from node to sink, from node to node, or the like. This is what a WSN is deployed for. Hence, this issue comes with various data routing models and often there are different types of network settings that influence the way of data collection and/or distribution. Considering the importance of this issue, in this paper, we present a survey on various prominent data dissemination techniques in such network. Our classification of the existing works is based on two main parameters: the number of sink (single or multiple) and the nature of its movement (static or mobile). Under these categories, we have analyzed various previous works for their relative strengths and weaknesses. A comparison is also made based on the operational methods of various data dissemination schemes

Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks: An Overview

Mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) have emerged and shifted the focus from the typical static wireless sensor networks to networks with mobile sensor nodes that are capable to sense the various types of events. Also, they can change their position frequently in a specific sensing area. The applications of the MWSNs can be widely divided into time-driven, event-driven, on-demand and tracking based applications. Mobile sensor node architecture, residual energy utilization, mobility, topology, scalability, localization, data collection routing, Quality of Service (QoS), etc., are the key factors to design an energy efficient MWSNs for some specific purpose. This chapter deals with an overview of the MWSNs and a few significant phenomena to design an energy efficient MWSNs to the large-scale environment