A distributed data storage and retrieval scheme in unattended WSNs using Homomorphic Encryption and secret sharing

Abstract

Many data storage schemes have been proposed in the past for keeping dependable data storage, but they are not designed for Unattended Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs). When applying these schemes to UWSNs, most of them have limitations such as high storage requirement, transmission cost, and not resilient to a large number of node compromises. To address the problem of data storage, transmission cost, and resilience of node compromise in UWSNs, we propose a novel Homomorphic Encryption and Homomorphic Secret Sharing based scheme (HEHSS) to accomplish the goals of confidentiality, resilience to node compromises, reliability, and efficiency of storage and transmission. Our scheme exploits the homomorphic secret sharing scheme to enable sensor nodes encode sensed data into several shares, and distribute them to their neighbors. This property allows the mobile sink to reconstruct data even if some of the shares stored in neighbors of a sensor are compromised. Detailed analysis has been conducted to evaluate the scheme in terms of efficiency and reliability.