Hybrid Red Deer Algorithm with Physical Unclonable Function for Security Enhancement in IoT-WSN

Abstract

In this modern era, Wireless Sensor Network (WSNs) have turned out to be a more attractive option, because of the advancements in communication. If the network is insecure, an attacker can intercept messages and break the sensor nodes’ security; as well as duplicate the authentication codes to launch a variety of attacks. As a result, Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) with unpredictable features are encouraged to be used in the development of lightweight cryptographic protocols. This work introduced the Red Deer Algorithm (RDA) with PUF as a new mutual authentication system. When a sensor receives a challenge from the gateway, the inbuilt PUF generates a key and distributes it to the sensor by providing complete resilience against malicious attacks. PUF is resistant to node acquisition, cloning, and malicious attacks, as well as node physical security flaws. Key distribution is moving too quickly and the adversary won’t be able to conduct a harmful attack in time. Furthermore, PUF’s unclonability and unexpected qualities provide key uniqueness and two-way authentication for improving the security. When compared to existing Tunicate Swarm Grey Wolf optimization (TSGWO) and PUF-Based Mutual-Authenticated Key Distribution (PUF-MAKD), the proposed RDA-PUF demonstrated better results. The simulation results are obtained in terms of minimizing energy consumption as 0.7 J, end-to-end delay as 7 sec, packet delivery ratio of 97%, increasing network lifetime to 1330 sec, and improving secure connectivity to 1.211.