Accelerated Verification of an ID-based Signature Scheme for Broadcast Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Broadcast authentication is a fundamental security service in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Although symmetric-key-based µTESLA-like schemes were employed due to their energy efficiency, they all suffer from DoS attacks resulting from the nature of delayed message authentication. Recently, several public-key-based schemes have been proposed to achieve immediate broadcast authentication with significantly improved security strength. While the public-key-based schemes obviate the security vulnerability inherent to symmetric-key-based µTESLA-like schemes, their signature verification is time-consuming. Thus, speeding up signature verification is a problem of considerable practical importance, especially in resource-constrained environments. This paper presents an accelerated verification of vBNN-IBS, a pairing-free identity-based signature with reduced signature size. A quantitative analysis demonstrates that the accelerated vBNN-IBS reduces 38.62% energy consumption in a 4×4 grid-based WSN and runs 66% faster than the traditional signature verification method. It also allows the total energy consumption to be reduced by up to 23.25% and 25.14% compared to, respectively, IMBAS [1] and EIBAS [13] ID-based broadcast authentication schemes.