Implementation of Rekeying Mechanism for Node Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are composed of sensor nodes usually called as motes organized in a cooperative network. These networks are especially cooperative because motes collect data from environment and the data is passed through network. Further data is collected at base station for processing. The networks are installed in rough environments and where traditional networks are not possible to function well. Such installation is called as deployment. Generally there are three issues of research in wireless sensor networks like deployment, operation and security. WSNs got high popularity due to broad range of applications. These networks have attracted tremendous researchers due to their unique characteristics that differ them from traditional wired networks. WSNs are special networks having great future ahead but at the same time suffer from many hazards due to their unique characteristics. They are having large number of low cost sensor nodes with constraints like low power (usually operated by battery), low processing ability, and communication and storage limitations. Due to deployment nature and radio links the nodes are easily targeted by attacker like physical attack of node capture. If we think of applying security to WSNs we have to face the resource limitations constraints. The resource limitations don’t allow for applying traditional mechanisms having large overhead and computational powers. Out of many security solutions authentication seems to be one of the best solutions to secure the whole network. The network can be made secure if we allow only true information to be inserted from true node. Authentication can be efficiently used to check valid, fake and modified communication. Such authentication techniques in wireless sensor networks are analyzed in this paper. Further this paper describes the implementation of a secured node verification scheme that authenticates the true nodes to access network and detects attacker nodes. The scheme never opens the secret keys during this process. The rekeying mechanism used also adds much security. The mitigation of some attacks is also explained with desired results.