Securing Wireless Sensor Networks

Mar 31, 2004

Abstract

Recent advances in electronic and computer technologies have paved the way for the proliferation of wireless sensor networks (WSN).
Sensor networks usually consist of a
large number of ultra-small autonomous devices. Each device, called a sensor node, is battery powered and equipped with integrated sensors, data processing capabilities, and short-range radio communications.
Sensor networks are
being deployed for a wide variety of applications, including military sensing and tracking, environment monitoring, patient monitoring and tracking, and smart environments.

When sensor networks are deployed in hostile environments, security becomes extremely important.
To provide security, communication should be encrypted and authenticated. The challenging problem is how to bootstrap secure communications among sensor nodes.
Many key agreement schemes used in general networks, such as public-key based schemes, are not suitable for wireless sensor networks. In this talk, I will first describe some major differences between sensor network security and traditional network security. I will then present two novel key agreement schemes that we have developed for wireless sensor networks.