BBAP-WSN: A New Blockchain-Based Authentication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks—WSNs, an important part of IoT—consist of sensor nodes with limited processing, memory capacities, and energy. Wireless Sensor Networks face many dangers as they are often distributed into untrusted regions. The accuracy of the data obtained in a WSN, where security threats cannot be prevented, is also questioned. In WSNs, the authentication of the resources and the data can be verified with the authentication mechanism. Authentication in WSNs allows the node to verify whether data have been sent from authorized sources and protects the original data from changes. However, there are some deficiencies in terms of security in existing authentication protocols such as ID spoofing attacks. In addition, blockchain, one of the emerging technologies, gives significant successful results in security applications. Cryptographically secured, immutable, non-repudiable, irrevocable, auditable, and verifiable can be given as security-related characteristics of the blockchain. This study aims to use these features of the blockchain in WSNs. In this study, a new blockchain-based authentication protocol was developed for WSNs. Based on the study’s system model, sensor nodes, cluster nodes, base station, and blockchain networks were created using a private blockchain, and users. A detailed security analysis was carried out for the study. At the same time, efficiency analysis was performed by implementing the proposed model on the WiSeN sensor node.