A Cross-Layer Security Scheme of Web-Services-Based Communications for IEEE 1451 Sensor and Actuator Networks

Jun Wu,Jiang Liu,Bin Duan,Ming Zhan

doi:10.1155/2013/138384

Abstract

IEEE 1451 standard has been proposed to provide a common communication interface and transducer electric data sheet format for wired and wireless distributed applications in smart transducers (sensors and actuators). Currently, a unified Web service for IEEE 1451 smart transducers is a must. However, ensuring the security of web-services-based communications for IEEE 1451 smart transducers is an unsolved problem. In this paper, we proposed a cross-layer security mechanism that deals with the requirements of authentication, integrity, confidentiality, and availability across the communication process in IEEE 1451 smart transducers. The scheme contains three cross-layer components logically, including XML Encryption and Signature, SOAP Security Extension, and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Security Checking. The former two components satisfy the requirements of confidentiality, availability, integrity, authentication, nonrepudiation, and freshness. The third component satisfies the requirement of availability, which can protect the system against denial-of-service (DoS) attack. The three cross-layer security components are integrated seamlessly in our scheme. To evaluate the overhead, we perform tests to evaluate the effect of message size on the performance of the access inquiry web service. The result supports the usefulness and feasibility of our scheme.

Highlights

In recent years, sensor and actuator have attracted a lot of attention recently due to their broad applications, ranging from industrial automation to environmental condition monitoring and control-to-intelligent transportation system to homeland defense [1,2,3,4,5]
The three components of the security scheme are based on Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1415 transducer services, services application programming interfaces (APIs), and XML schema of API, respectively, which are defined in IEEE 1451 standards
To secure the web-services-based communications for networked IEEE 1451 smart transducers, we proposed a crosslayer security mechanism, which is based on the layer architecture of Web services protocol stack

Summary

Introduction

Sensor and actuator have attracted a lot of attention recently due to their broad applications, ranging from industrial automation to environmental condition monitoring and control-to-intelligent transportation system to homeland defense [1,2,3,4,5]. IEEE 1451 standard is proposed to provide a common communication interface and transducer electric data sheet format for wired and wireless distributed applications. It will eliminate the issue of proprietary communication systems utilizing a wide variety of protocols, labels, semantics, and so forth, enabling a transducer application to exchange information with different smart transducers independently of a vendor. TLS and NLS are recommended to secure TCP/IP-based communication for wireless sensor and actuator networks in IEEE 1415.5 These security schemes provide security only in a secure channel, and not in files or databases. We proposed a cross-layer security scheme for web-services-based communication for IEEE 1451 smart transducers.

System Architecture and Security Requirements

Web Services Architecture and Web Services Security

The Proposed Security Scheme

Security Analysis

Implementation

Conclusion