Energy-Based Dynamic Encryption for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Designing cost-proficient, secure network protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a challenging problem because sensors are limited wireless devices. Since the sensor’s energy consumption, we introduce an Implicit Vitality Base Encryption Key (IVBEK) to avoid decayed keys. In addition to the goal of saving energy, minimal transmission is monitoring the wireless spectrum. IVBEK is a secure communication framework where sensed data is encoded using a scheme based on a permutation code generated via the ARCFOUR encryption mechanism. The key to the ARCFOUR encryption mechanism dynamically changes as a function of the residual virtual energy of the sensor. Thus, a one-time dynamic key is employed for one packet only and different keys are used for the successive packets of the stream. The intermediate nodes along the path to the sink are able to verify the authenticity and integrity of the incoming packets using a predicted value of the key generated by the sender’s virtual energy, thus requiring no need for specific rekeying messages. IVBEK is able to efficiently detect and filter false data injected into the network by malicious outsiders.