Eyad Taqieddin

EPC Gen2v2 RFID Standard Authentication and Ownership Management Protocol

Providing security in passive RFID systems has gained significant attention due to their widespread use. Research has focused on providing both location and data privacy through mutual authentication between the readers and tags. In such systems, each party is responsible of verifying the identity of the other party with whom it is communicating. For such a task to succeed, the tags and readers are initialized with shared secret information which is updated after a successful authentication session. Ownership management, which includes transfer and delegation, builds upon mutual authentication. Here, the use of security in RFID is extended to encompass the more practical case where a tagged item is shifted from one owner to another. As such, we propose a new authentication and ownership management protocol that is compliant with the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 Version 2 standard. The protocol is formally analyzed and successfully implemented on hardware. The implementation shows that the use of such protocol adds security with little added overhead in terms of communication and computation.

Fuzzy logic based energy efficient adaptive clustering protocol

In order to overcome the problem of the limited power of the sensor battery and thus prolonging the lifetime of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), many routing algorithms were proposed to gather and forward the sensed data to the base station. One of the most well-known routing algorithms that were proposed in the last years is the LEACH protocol. It is a dynamic cluster-based routing protocol that divides the network lifetime to rounds where each round is composed of two phases: setup and steady state. The key factor of each round is the number of nodes that will act as cluster heads (CHs). Each CH is responsible for collecting the sensed data from the sensor nodes that are in the same cluster and then forwarding the aggregated data to the base station. In this paper we suggest FL-LEACH protocol that employs fuzzy logic in order to determine the number of CHs that should be used in the WSN. FL-LEACH is a fuzzy inference system that depends on two variables: number of nodes in the network and nodes density. Assuming uniform distribution of the nodes over the sensor field, the novelty of the proposed approach is in its ability to determine the number of CHs without getting other information about the network. Matlab simulation is used to show the effectiveness of the FL-LEACH protocol compared with other protocols, such as the pure LEACH and the genetic-based protocol, LEACH-GA. Simulation results have shown that FL-LEACH outperforms LEACH and LEACH-GA in terms of network lifetime.

Experimental evaluation of image compression and transmission for TinyOS-based imote2 platform

In this paper, the performance of JPEG image compression and transmission using TinyOS-based Imote2 wireless sensor network platform is experimentally evaluated via a newly developed testbed. This testbed supports multihop sensor networks based on the Imote2 platform equipped with the Imote2 Multimedia Sensor Board. In addition, a standard JPEG library is embedded into the Imote2 platform to provide in-node image compression. The processing and transmission times, power consumption, and peak-signal-to-noise ratio performance metrics measurements are reported. The results show that the processing requirements are less than those of the transmission. According to the results, a tradeoff between the image quality and the energy and delay costs may be obtained.

An Energy-Balanced Cluster-Based Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper proposes a novel energy-efficient clustering protocol for wireless sensor networks. It combines the benefits of using the k-means clustering algorithm with the, recently developed, LEACH with virtual forces LEACH-VF protocol. In this work, the k-means algorithm is employed to determine k centroids around which the clusters will be formed. After that, the virtual field force method is applied to these clusters to determine the most suitable positions for each node. The main target of such an approach is to improve the energy balance in the network and to extend the network lifetime. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol extends the time before the first node death, minimizes the variance of the average node energy, and reduces the distance that the sensor nodes travel within their respective clusters.

A Practical Study of Jointly Exploiting Multiple Image Compression Techniques for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

In Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks, the amount of multimedia traffic generated by the source nodes and relayed throughout the network towards the sink nodes is relatively vary large. As a result, the overall network performance and operational lifetime rely heavily on the efficiency and the complexity of the compression techniques used. However, known compression techniques have either high efficiency or low complexity but not both, which causes an imbalance in the distribution of the available network resources and hence shortens the network lifetime. In this work, a testbed to experimentally evaluate the performance and energy consumption of image compression and transmission was developed. Based on the testbed, the JPEG and JPEG2000 image compression algorithms were simultaneously embedded and evaluated with the purpose of jointly utilizing the features of both algorithms in order to facilitate a balanced tradeoff between the application performance requirements and the current network status. The analysis of the results verified that, in practical implementations of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks, using more than one compression technique by the same source node is feasible and has the potential of utilizing the capabilities of each technique based on the given situation.

Efficient FPGA Implementation of the RC4 Stream Cipher using Block RAM and Pipelining

Abstract RC4 is a popular stream cipher, which is widely used in many security protocols and standards due to its speed and flexibility. Several hardware implementations were previously suggested in the literature with the goal of improving the performance, area, or both. In this paper, a new hardware implementation of the RC4 algorithm using FPGA is proposed. The main idea of this design is the use of a dual-port block RAM in the FPGA in order to better utilize the available logic and memory resources. Combined with a new pipelined hardware implementation, the new design achieves better performance. The design is described using Verilog HDL and synthesized and implemented using Xilinx ISE suite for different FPGA devices. Synthesis results show that the proposed design achieves higher efficiency than previous implementations by reducing area while maintaining a good throughput/LUT ratio. The proposed design is also more efficient in terms of power consumption.

A Gen2v2 compliant RFID authentication and ownership management protocol

Passive RFID tags and readers are initialized with secret keys which are updated after a successful cycle of authenticatio. Ownership transfer builds upon mutual authentication where a tagged item is shifted from one owner to another. Since the available protocols provide limited security for passive RFID systems and are vulnerable to attackers, we propose a novel ultra-lightweight authentication and ownership management protocol which conforms to the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 Version 2 standard while taking into account the storage and computational resources of the tags. The protocol is successfully implemented on hardware to overcome the weaknesses of the available protocols. The experimental results show that the use of such protocol ensures security with little added communication and computation overhead.

A simulation testbed to jointly exploit multiple image compression techniques for wireless multimedia sensor networks

As the demand for large-scale wireless multimedia sensor networks increases, so does the need for well-designed protocols that optimize the utilization of available networks resources. This requires experimental testing for realistic performance evaluation and design tuning. However, experimental testing of large-scale wireless networks using hardware testbeds is usually very hard to perform due to the need for collecting and monitoring the performance metrics data for multiple sensor nodes all at the same time, especially the nodes energy consumption data. On the other hand, pure simulation testing may not accurately replicate the real-life scenarios, especially those parameters that are related to the wireless signal behavior in special environments. Therefore, this work attempts to close this gap between experimental and simulation testing. This paper presents a scalable simulation testbed that attempts to mimic our previously designed small-scale hardware testbed for wireless multimedia sensor networks by tuning the simulation parameters to match the real-life measurements obtained via experimental testing. The proposed simulation testbed embeds the JPEG and JPEG2000 image compression algorithms and potentially allows for network-controlled image compression and transmission decisions. The simulation results show very close match to the small-scale experimental testing as well as to the hypothetical large-scale extensions that were based on the experimental results.

Fuzzy Logic-Based Cluster Heads Percentage Calculation for Improving the Performance of the LEACH Protocol

In wireless sensor networks, cluster-based routing was proven to be the most energy-efficient strategy to deal with the scaling problem. In addition, selecting the proper number of clusters is a critical decision that can impose a significant impact on the energy consumption and the network lifetime. This paper presents FL-LEACH, a variant of the well-known LEACH clustering protocol, which attempts to relax the stringent strategy of determining the number of clusters used by LEACH via fuzzy logic decision-making scheme. This relates the number of clusters to a number of network characteristics such as the number of sensor nodes, the area of the sensing field, and the location of the base station. The performance of FL-LEACH was evaluated via simulation and was compared against LEACH using standard metrics such as network lifetime and remaining network energy. The results depicted that the proposed approach has the potential to substantially conserve the sensor node energy and extend lifetime of the network.

A new approach for target coverage in wireless sensor networks using fuzzy logic

The use of wireless sensor networks for monitoring and surveillance has gained attention in the past few years. The main challenge experienced in these network applications is how to guarantee a suitable level of coverage such that every target or event is observed. In this paper, a new fuzzy logic based scheme is proposed in order to build the set covers. The computations of this centralized scheme are done on the Base Station. The main goal is to determine a portion of the sensor nodes that must go into active mode to satisfy the coverage requirement. All other nodes will switch to sleep mode until the next round.