Data transmitted encryption for clustering protocol in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel encryption schema (ECDH – RSA) based on Elliptic Curves Diffie – Hellman algorithm (ECDH) and RSA algorithm to secure transmitted data in Heterogeneous Wireless sensor networks (HWSNs). The proposed encryption is built under Cheesboard Clustering Routing Method (CCRM). The CCRM used to balancing node energy consumption. To achieve good scalability and performance by deploying a small number of powerful high-end sensors in addition to a large number of lowend sensors. ECDH is used to exchange public and private keys due to its ability to provide high security with small key size. The proposed encryption key is 176-bit and is produced by combining it’s key, node identification number, and distance to its cluster head (CH). To reduce energy consumption of CH, RSA encryption is used to allow CH to aggregate the encrypted data without having to decrypt them. We demonstrated that the proposed method is capable to work with different sensing environments that need to capture text data as well as images. The Simulation results demonstrated that our proposed method greatly improve the network performance in terms of energy consumption and highest paths.