On Topological Properties of Wireless Sensor Networks under the q-Composite Key Predistribution Scheme with On/Off Channels

The q-composite key predistribution scheme [1] is used prevalently for secure communications in large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Prior work [2]-[4] explores topological properties of WSNs employing the q-composite scheme for q = 1 with unreliable communication links modeled as independent on/off channels. In this paper, we investigate topological properties related to the node degree in WSNs operating under the q-composite scheme and the on/off channel model. Our results apply to general q and are stronger than those reported for the node degree in prior work even for the case of q being 1. Specifically, we show that the number of nodes with certain degree asymptotically converges in distribution to a Poisson random variable, present the asymptotic probability distribution for the minimum degree of the network, and establish the asymptotically exact probability for the property that the minimum degree is at least an arbitrary value. Numerical experiments confirm the validity of our analytical findings.Comment: Best Student Paper Finalist in IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) 201

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

AN ENERGY EFFICIENT CROSS-LAYER NETWORK OPERATION MODEL FOR MOBILE WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are modern technologies used to sense/control the environment whether indoors or outdoors. Sensor nodes are miniatures that can sense a specific event according to the end user(s) needs. The types of applications where such technology can be utilised and implemented are vast and range from households’ low end simple need applications to high end military based applications. WSNs are resource limited. Sensor nodes are expected to work on a limited source of power (e.g., batteries). The connectivity quality and reliability of the nodes is dependent on the quality of the hardware which the nodes are made of. Sensor nodes are envisioned to be either stationary or mobile. Mobility increases the issues of the quality of the operation of the network because it effects directly on the quality of the connections between the nodes

Communication Security in Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) usually consists of a large number of small, low-cost devices that have limited energy supply, computation, memory, and communication capacities. Recently, WSNs have drawn a lot of attention due to their broad applications in both military and civilian domains. Communication security is essential to the success of WSN applications, especially for those mission-critical applications working in unattended and even hostile environments. However, providing satisfactory security protection in WSNs has ever been a challenging task due to various network & resource constraints and malicious attacks. This motivates the research on communication security for WSNs. This dissertation studies communication security in WSNs with respect to three important aspects. The first study addresses broadcast/multicast security in WSNs. We propose a multi-user broadcast authentication technique, which overcomes the security vulnerability of existing solutions. The proposed scheme guarantees immediate broadcast authentication by employing public key cryptography, and achieves the efficiency through integrating various techniques from different domains. We also address multicast encryption to solve data confidentiality concern for secure multicast. We propose an efficient multicast key management scheme supporting a wide range of multicast semantics, which utilizes the fact that sensors are both routers and end-receivers. The second study addresses data report security in WSNs. We propose a location-aware end-to-end security framework for WSNs, in which secret keys are bound to geographic locations so that the impact of sensor compromise are limited only to their vicinity. The proposed scheme effectively defeats not only bogus data injection attacks but also various DoS attacks. In this study, we also address event boundary detection as a specific case of secure data aggregation in WSNs. We propose a secure and fault-tolerant event boundary detection scheme, which securely detects the boundaries of large spatial events in a localized statistic manner. The third study addresses random key pre-distribution in WSNs. We propose a keyed-hash-chain-based key pool generation technique, which leads to a more efficient key pre-distribution scheme with better security resilience in the case of sensor compromise

RESTful Service Development for Resource-constrained Environments

International audienceThe use of resource-constrained devices, such as smartphones, PDAs, Tablet PCs, and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is spreading rapidly in the business community and our daily life. Accessing services from such devices is very common in ubiquitous environments, but mechanisms to describe, implement and distribute these services remain a major challenge. Web services have been characterized as an efficient and widely-adopted approach to overcome heterogeneity, while this technology is still heavyweight for resource-constrained devices. The emergence of REST architectural style as a lightweight and simple interaction model has encouraged researchers to study the feasibility of exploiting REST principles to design and integrate services hosted on devices with limited capabilities. In this chapter, we discuss the state-of-the-art in applying REST concepts to develop Web services for WSNs and smartphones as two representative resource-constrained platforms, and then we provide a comprehensive survey of existing solutions in this area. In this context, we report on the DIGIHOME platform, a home monitoring middleware solution, which enables efficient service integration in ubiquitous environments using REST architectural style. In particular, we target our reference platforms for homemonitoring systems, namelyWSNs and smartphones, and report our experiments in applying the concept of Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) in order to provide resource-efficient RESTful distribution of Web services for those platforms

Time constrained fault tolerance and management framework for k-connected distributed wireless sensor networks based on composite event detection

Wireless sensor nodes themselves are exceptionally complex systems where a variety of components interact in a complex way. In enterprise scenarios it becomes highly important to hide the details of the underlying sensor networks from the applications and to guarantee a minimum level of reliability of the system. One of the challenges faced to achieve this level of reliability is to overcome the failures frequently faced by sensor networks due to their tight integration with the environment. Failures can generate false information, which may trigger incorrect business processes, resulting in additional costs. Sensor networks are inherently fault prone due to the shared wireless communication medium. Thus, sensor nodes can lose synchrony and their programs can reach arbitrary states. Since on-site maintenance is not feasible, sensor network applications should be local and communication-efficient self-healing. Also, as per my knowledge, no such general framework exist that addresses all the fault issues one may encounter in a WSN, based on the extensive, exhaustive and comprehensive literature survey in the related areas of research. As one of the main goals of enterprise applications is to reduce the costs of business processes, a complete and more general Fault Tolerance and management framework for a general WSN, irrespective of the node types and deployment conditions is proposed which would help to mitigate the propagation of failures in a business environment, reduce the installation and maintenance costs and to gain deployment flexibility to allow for unobtrusive installation

A Survey on IT-Techniques for a Dynamic Emergency Management in Large Infrastructures

This deliverable is a survey on the IT techniques that are relevant to the three use cases of the project EMILI. It describes the state-of-the-art in four complementary IT areas: Data cleansing, supervisory control and data acquisition, wireless sensor networks and complex event processing. Even though the deliverable’s authors have tried to avoid a too technical language and have tried to explain every concept referred to, the deliverable might seem rather technical to readers so far little familiar with the techniques it describes