Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged as one of the hottest fields today due to their low-cost, self-organizing behavior, sensing ability in harsh environments, and their large application scope. One of the most challenging topics in WSNs is security. In some applications it is critical to provide confidentiality and authentication in order to prevent information from being compromised. However, providing key management for confidentiality and authentication is difficult due to the ad hoc nature, intermittent connectivity, and resource limitations of the network. Though traditional public keybased security protocols do exist, they need large memory bandwidths and complex algorithms, and are thus unsuitable for WSNs.

Current solutions to the security issue in WSNs were created with only authentication and confidentiality in mind. This is far from optimal, because routing and security are closely correlated. Routing and security are alike because similar steps are taken in order to achieve these functions within a given network. Therefore, security and routing can be combined together in a cross-layer design, reducing the consumption of resources.

The focus of this work is on the integration of routing and key management to provide an energy efficient security and routing solution. Towards this goal, this work proposes a security protocol that encompasses the following features: integration of security and routing, dynamic security, robust re-keying, low-complexity, and dual levels of encryption. This work combines all the robust features of current security implementations while adding additional features like dual layer encryption, resulting in an extremely efficient security protocol.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Wireless sensor networks--Security measures; Wireless LANs--Security measures; Computer algorithms

Publication Date

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Computer Engineering (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Computer Engineering (KGCOE)

Advisor

Fei Hu

Advisor/Committee Member

Muhammad Shaaban

Advisor/Committee Member

Greg Semeraro

Comments

Physical copy available from RIT's Wallace Library at TK7872.D48 S43 2005

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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