A Secure Time Synchronization Scheme for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

Abstract

Time synchronization is critical for many sensor network operations, such as mobile object tracking and sensor node scheduling. Many existing time synchronization schemes for sensor networks do not considering security issue, and they are vulnerable to several attacks. Furthermore, most existing synchronization schemes are designed for homogeneous sensor networks, where all sensors have the same capability. Research has shown that homogeneous ad hoc networks have poor fundamental limits and performance. To improve performance and security of sensor networks, we adopt a Heterogeneous Sensor Network (HSN) model. In this paper, we present a secure and efficient time synchronization scheme for HSN by utilizing powerful high-end sensors. We implement the synchronization scheme in real sensors and our experiments show that the scheme achieves high accuracy. The security analysis demonstrates that our scheme is resilient to various attacks.