A Survey on the Security of Low Power Wide Area Networks: Threats, Challenges, and Potential Solutions.

Suvendi Rimer,Khmaies Ouahada,Kuburat Oyeranti Adefemi Alimi,Adnan M Abu-Mahfouz

doi:10.3390/s20205800

Abstract

Low power wide area network (LPWAN) is among the fastest growing networks in Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Owing to varieties of outstanding features which include long range communication and low power consumption, LPWANs are fast becoming the most widely deployed connectivity standards in IoT domain. However, this promising network are exposed to various security and privacy threats and challenges. For reliable connectivity within networks, the security and privacy challenges need to be effectively addressed with proper mitigation protocol in place. In this paper, a comprehensive review on the security feature of LPWAN is presented. The paper mainly focuses on analyzing LPWAN’s key cybersecurity architecture and it present a significant emphasis on how the LPWAN is highly attractive to intruders and attackers. This paper aims at summarizing recent research works on key LPWAN security challenges such as replay attack, denial-of-service attack, worm hole attack, and eavesdropping attack, the effect of the attacks, and most importantly the various approaches proposed in the literature for the attacks’ mitigation. The paper concludes by highlighting major research gaps and future directions for the successful deployment of LPWAN.

Highlights

The evolutionary trends in communication technologies which brought about inventions which includes the Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE) have substantially created new and better living standards for humans and their environments [1,2]
We present a comprehensive review of the security and privacy issues and attacks that affect
There have been relatively limited research works focusing on Low power wide area network (LPWAN) security assessment and attack countermeasures

Summary

Introduction

The evolutionary trends in communication technologies which brought about inventions which includes the Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE) have substantially created new and better living standards for humans and their environments [1,2]. By enabling efficient communication between varieties of devices, the IoT technologies are playing crucial roles in enhancing human quality of living in a broad spectrum of domains that are not limited to day to day smart applications (smart homes, smart transportation, smart education, smart cities), economy applications (enhancement of productivity in manufacturing plants, mining fields, oil and gas fields), health care applications, and security applications [3,4,5,6,7]. Varieties of communication approaches and connectivity standards have been deployed in IoT environment. Popular short-range standards such as IEEE 802.15.1 and IEEE 802.15.4 have been widely used but their short communication range have been well publicized as a major limitation especially as various key IoT domains require extensive

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Conclusion