Kamanashis Biswas

Securing Smart Cities Using Blockchain Technology

A smart city uses information technology to integrate and manage physical, social, and business infrastructures in order to provide better services to its dwellers while ensuring efficient and optimal utilization of available resources. With the proliferation of technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and interconnected networks, smart cities can deliver innovative solutions and more direct interaction and collaboration between citizens and the local government. Despite a number of potential benefits, digital disruption poses many challenges related to information security and privacy. This paper proposes a security framework that integrates the blockchain technology with smart devices to provide a secure communication platform in a smart city.

An Encryption Scheme Using Chaotic Map and Genetic Operations for Wireless Sensor Networks

Over the past decade, the application domain of wireless sensor networks has expanded steadily, ranging from environmental management to industry control, and from structural health monitoring to strategic surveillance. With the proliferation of sensor networks at home, work place, and beyond, securing data in the network has become a challenge. A number of security mechanisms have been proposed for sensor networks to provide data confidentiality: 1) advanced encryption system; 2) KATAN; 3) LED; and 4) TWINE. However, these schemes have drawbacks, including security vulnerabilities, need for hardware-based implementation, and higher computational complexity. To address these limitations, we propose a lightweight block cipher based on chaotic map and genetic operations. The proposed cryptographic scheme employs elliptic curve points to verify the communicating nodes and as one of the chaotic map parameters to generate the pseudorandom bit sequence. This sequence is used in XOR, mutation, and crossover operations in order to encrypt the data blocks. The experimental results based on Mica2 sensor mote show that the proposed encryption scheme is nine times faster than the LED protocol and two times faster than the TWINE protocol. We have also performed a number of statistical tests and cryptanalytic attacks to evaluate the security strength of the algorithm and found the cipher provably secure.

An Analytical Model for Lifetime Estimation of Wireless Sensor Networks

We propose an analytical model to formally define the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks by considering various input factors including remaining energy, link quality, and location of the sensor nodes in the network. The model derives an expression for lifetime estimation on the basis of distribution of sensor nodes in the deployment area. The proposed model can be used to evaluate the performance of any routing protocol. We validate the model by means of simulation and show that the analytical outcomes are close to the experimental results.

A Simple Lightweight Encryption Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Security is a critical issue in many sensor network applications. A number of security mechanisms are developed for wireless sensor networks based on classical cryptography. AES, RC5, SkipJack and XXTEA are some symmetric-key encryption algorithms that are deployed in sensor network environments. However, these algorithms have their own weakness, such as vulnerable to chosen-plaintext attack, brute force attack and computational complexity. We propose an energy efficient lightweight encryption scheme based on pseudorandom bit sequence generated by elliptic curve operations. We present experimental results of our proposed algorithm employed on real sensor nodes operating in TinyOS. We also discuss the security strength of our algorithm by presenting the security analysis of various tests and cryptanalytic attacks.

Performance Evaluation of Block Ciphers for Wireless Sensor Networks

Security is one of the major concerns in many Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications. A number of cryptographic algorithms have been developed to provide security services in WSNs. However, selecting an energy-efficient and lightweight cipher is a challenging task due to resource constrained nature of sensor nodes. Systematic evaluation of cryptographic algorithms is, therefore, necessary to provide a good understanding of the trade-off between security performance and operational cost. In this paper, we have examined five block ciphers: Skipjack, Corrected Block Tiny Encryption Algorithm (XXTEA), RC5, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and Chaotic-Map and Genetic-Operations based Encryption Algorithm (CGEA). The performance of these ciphers is evaluated on Arduino Pro and Mica2 sensor motes. Then the memory usage, operation time, and computational cost are compared. Finally, some recommendations are provided on evaluated block ciphers and implementation platforms.

Lightweight security protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of a large number of small sensor nodes (SNs) that are usually deployed in hostile environments. These nodes are vulnerable to a number of security attacks and it is difficult to implement complex cryptographic schemes in SNs due to their resource constrained nature. Hence, WSNs need energy efficient and secure communication schemes in terms of storage space, power consumption and operation speed. In this work, we propose a secure and lightweight encryption scheme based on chaotic map and genetic operations. We also present some initial results of security strength and performance evaluation experiments.

An Interference Aware Heuristic Routing Protocol for Wireless Home Automation Networks

Wireless Home Automation Networks consist of battery powered sensors and actuators that communicate with each other over wireless channels. The sensor nodes collect environmental information such as temperature, light intensity, humidity, and pressure to provide context-aware services and to facilitate smart home control. However, resource limitations, unpredictable topology changes, and interference introduce a number of challenges to the design of home automation protocols. One of the challenging tasks is developing energy efficient routing protocols to prolong the network lifetime. This paper proposes an interference aware heuristic routing protocol which determines the forwarding path between sensors and the base station using a heuristic function and a heuristic search algorithm. On the basis of local and global distance, longevity factor (LF), and link quality (LQ), the heuristic function generates a heuristic value for each node and this value is used in A_ search algorithm to determine the efficient route. Simulation results show that the proposed routing scheme outperforms GAHR and AODVjr protocols in terms of network lifetime, energy consumption, and message throughput. Furthermore, it achieves up to 15% increase in packet delivery ratio over GAHR protocol in a noisy environment