Ansgar Kellner

A Survey on Measures for Secure Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

In the near future, it is likely that wireless sensor networks (WSNs) become a major technology for the sensing in different application areas. One of the main challenges in WSNs is the secure routing of data through the network. This is resulting from the fact that WSNs are normally deployed in unattended or even hostile environments. While in last few years the routing approaches were mainly focussing on metrics such as robustness, energy preservation, etc., recently, different security solutions came to the fore that were taking also the security issues in WSNs into account. In this paper, different types of attacks on the routing layer of WSNs are investigated. Subsequently, measures for secure routing; including cryptography, key establishment, trust & reputation and secure localization; are reviewed, which were proposed by researchers in this area. Based on these findings, future prospects are discussed and final conclusions will be drawn.

Secure and Authenticated Data Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks.

Securing communications in wireless sensor networks is increasingly important as the diversity of applications increases. However, even today, it is equally important for the measures employed to be energy efficient. For this reason, this publication analyzes the suitability of various cryptographic primitives for use in WSNs according to various criteria and, finally, describes a modular, PKI-based framework for confidential, authenticated, secure communications in which most suitable primitives can be employed. Due to the limited capabilities of common WSN motes, criteria for the selection of primitives are security, power efficiency and memory requirements. The implementation of the framework and the singular components have been tested and benchmarked in our testbed of IRISmotes.

Multi-objective ant colony optimisation-based routing in WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are expected to play an important role for sensing applications in the near future. A simple but robust way for the routing in WSNs is the use of multi-objective ant colony optimisation (MOACO) algorithms, biologically-inspired algorithms that are capable of considering multiple objectives in the optimisation process at the same time. In this paper MARFWSN, a multi-objective ant colony optimisation routing framework for WSNs, is proposed that allows to use MOACO algorithms for the routing in WSNs. Due to its modulised structure different MOACO algorithms can be simply docked using the provided interface. Additionally, to mitigate insider attacks, trust is considered as one of the objectives in the route optimisation process.

Autonomous Group-Based Authentication Mechanism in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In ad hoc networks, trust calculation mechanisms contribute to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy nodes. The individual trust is an important element for the security of the network to isolate the malicious nodes; a related topic is the extent to which it is possible to trust a group as a separate entity. For the most important trust metric, the authenticity of the participants in the network, we propose a self-organized group-based authentication mechanism (SGAM) in which not only the social relationship between each individual, but also the social relationship between groups is considered to authenticate a node. We propose a model that shows how a group of nodes can be trusted. It defines the notion of trust between groups based on different relationships. With this notion, it is possible to identify and isolate low reputed groups containing malicious members and consequently to increase the trust level of authenticity of the nodes in the whole network.

Simple secure PKI-based scheme for wireless sensor networks

This paper describes a simple secure scheme for wireless sensor motes. The purpose of the proposed scheme is to securely exchange data among motes by using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with a central authority. Key pairs are pre-distributed and signed by the Certification Authority (CA). The subsequent communication between the motes utilizes symmetric cryptography for efficiency reasons. In the first phase the scheme has been modeled and simulated by TOSSIM simulator to validate and measure its performance. Afterwards, a practical test in our Test bed has been conducted. The initial results are presented in the following paper.

Monte Carlo Localization for path-based mobility in mobile wireless sensor networks

Localization is a mandatory requirement in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Many solutions focus on static networks and do not account for mobility. In this paper we present an extension of the Monte Carlo Localization method, which exploits the mobility behavior of certain applications in WSNs to reduce the localization error. Our approach called PO-MCL maps regular traveled paths of nodes to an internal grid, which is used to predict the nodes behavior in the absence of seed nodes. We show by excessive simulations that our approach is able to reduce the localization error by up to 50 %.1

Improving energy efficiency of data communication in a hybrid PKI-based approach for WSNs

Securing communications in wireless sensor networks is increasingly important, as the diversity of applications increases. In this paper, we analyze the performance and power efficiency of bulk user data communications in a simple, secure PKI-based communication scheme employing a hybrid cryptographic approach. Detailed benchmarks of the involved cryptographic primitives are performed. The results are used to determine how the necessary computing ressources can be reduced from the current implementation, without compromising and even increasing security. At the same time, the special circumstances of the PKI-based framework on memory constrained sensor motes, such as IRIS or MICA2 motes, are considered. An improved set of cryptographic primitives is determined and implemented, improving execution speed and thus energy efficiency.

Multi-objective Ant Colony Optimisation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Biologically inspired ant colony optimisation (ACO) has been used in several applications to solve NP-hard combinatorial optimisation problems. An interesting area of application for ACO-based algorithms is their use in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Due to their robustness and self-organisation, ACO-based algorithms are well-suited for the distributed, autonomous and self-organising structure of WSNs. While the original ACO-based algorithm and its direct descendants can take only one objective into account, multi-objective ant colony optimisation (MOACO) is capable of considering multiple (conflicting) objectives simultaneously. In this chapter, a detailed review and summary of MOACO-based algorithms and their applications in WSNs is given. In particular, a taxonomy of MOACO-based algorithms is presented and their suitability for multi-objective combinatorial optimisation problems in WSNs is highlighted.

Securing mobile ad-hoc networks using an artificial immune system

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) rely on the fundamental idea that all nodes act cooperatively to transfer data packets via multiple hops from a source to a remote destination. However, apart from the desired behaviour, in reality, malicious nodes can easily join the network and behave maliciously by not correctly participating in the network, e.g. by dropping packets or selectively forwarding packets. To mitigate the effect of malicious nodes in the network, in the first step, the misbehaving nodes must be identified. Based on the idea of biologically-inspired algorithms, in this paper, an artificial immune system is proposed that is able to detect misbehaving nodes in the network.