Wireless Sensor Network with Blockchain Technology using Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem and its Applications

Abstract

Wireless sensor network (WSN), a type of communication system, is normally deployed into the unattended environment where the intended user can get access to the network. The sensor nodes collect data from this environment. If the data are valuable and confidential, then security measures are needed to protect them from the unauthorized access. This situation requires an access control protocol (ACP) in the design of sensor network because of sensor nodes which are vulnerable to various malicious attacks during the authentication and key establishment and the new node addition phase. Nowadays, wireless sensor networks are being widely applied in many fields of human life such as civil and military applications. Although WSNs can bring a lot of benefits and conveniences. However, when applying the WSNs in the real world we have to face many challenges such as security, storage due to its centralized server/client model. Therefore, it is necessary to apply the distributed model in the WSNs system. One of the newest distributed systems today is Blockchain (BC). Blockchain is a decentralized technology that can help the computation and management processes as well as security in WSNs. In this paper, we propose a secured ACP for such WSN. This protocol is based on Elliptic Curve Discrete Log Problem (ECDLP) and double trapdoor chameleon hash function which secures the WSN from malicious attacks such as node masquerading attack, replay attack, man-in-the-middle attack, and forgery attacks. Proposed ACP has a special feature known as session key security. Also, the proposed ACP is more efficient as it requires only one modular multiplication during the initialization phase. This article provides an overview of Blockchain integration in WSN with highlighting the benefits and challenges of applying this technology to WSN. We can conclude that using Blockchain technology to solve the problem of security and distributed storage for WSN can be an effective approach. It could pave the way for new research directions and distributed applications.