Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are formed by deploying as large number of sensor nodes in an area for the surveillance of generally remote locations. A typical sensor node is made up of different components to perform the task of sensing, processing and transmitting data. WSNs are used for many applications in diverse forms from indoor deployment to outdoor deployment. The basic requirement of every application is to use the secured network. Providing security to the sensor network is a very challenging issue along with saving its energy. Many security threats may affect the functioning of these networks. WSNs must be secured to keep an attacker from hindering the delivery of sensor information and from forging sensor information as these networks are build for remote surveillance and unauthorized changes in the sensed data may lead to wrong information to the decision makers. This paper studies the various security issues and security threats in WSNs. Also, gives brief description of some of the protocols used to achieve security in the network. This paper also compares the proposed methodologies analytically and demonstrates the findings in a table. These findings can be used further by other researchers or Network implementers for making the WSN secure by choosing the best security mechanism.

Security issues in Wireless Sensor Network — A review

In Rechargeable Wireless Sensor Networks (R-WSNs), in order to achieve the maximum data collection rate it is critical that sensors operate in very low duty cycles because of the sporadic availability of energy. A sensor has to stay in a dormant state in most of the time in order to recharge the battery and use the energy prudently. In addition, a sensor cannot always conserve energy if a network is able to harvest excessive energy from the environment due to its limited storage capacity. Therefore, energy exploitation and energy saving have to be traded off depending on distinct application scenarios. Since higher data collection rate or maximum data collection rate is the ultimate objective for sensor deployment, surplus energy of a node can be utilized for strengthening packet delivery efficiency and improving the data generating rate in R-WSNs. In this work, we propose an algorithm based on data aggregation to compute an upper data generation rate by maximizing it as an optimization problem for a network, which is formulated as a linear programming problem. Subsequently, a dual problem by introducing Lagrange multipliers is constructed, and subgradient algorithms are used to solve it in a distributed manner. At the same time, a topology controlling scheme is adopted for improving the network's performance. Through extensive simulation and experiments, we demonstrate that our algorithm is efficient at maximizing the data collection rate in rechargeable wireless sensor networks.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/16/8/1201/pdf

Maximum Data Collection Rate Routing Protocol Based on Topology Control for Rechargeable Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network typically consists of large number of low-cost densely deployed sensor nodes that have strictly constrained sensing, computation, and communication capabilities. Because of resource restricted sensor nodes, it is necessary to reduce the amount of information transmission so that average lifetime of sensor and thus the bandwidth consumption are improved. As wireless sensor networks are typically deployed in remote and hostile environments to transmit sensitive data, sensor nodes are in danger of node compromise attacks and security issues like data confidentiality and integrity are terribly necessary. Therefore, in this paper we have explored general security threats in wireless sensor network and made an extensive study to categorize available data gathering protocols and analyze possible security threats on them.

Security issues in wireless sensor networks: A review

Agriculture plays an important role for many countries. It provides raw materials for food and provides large employment opportunities for people in the country, especially for countries with a dense population. To enhance agriculture productivity, modern technology such as wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be utilized to help in monitoring important parameters in thw agricultural field such as temperature, light, soil moisture, etc. During the monitoring process, if security compromises happen, such as interception or modification of the parameters, it may lead to false decisions and bring damage to agriculture productivity. Therefore, it is very important to develop secure authentication and key agreement for the system. Recently, Ali et al. proposed an authentication and key agreement scheme using WSNs for agriculture monitoring. However, it fails to provide user untraceability, user anonymity, and session key security; it suffers from sensor node impersonation attack and perfect forward secrecy attack; and even worse has denial of service as a service. This study discusses these limitations and proposes a new secure and more efficient authentication and key agreement scheme for agriculture monitoring using WSNs. The proposed scheme utilizes dynamic pseudonym identity to guarantee user privacy and eliminates redundant computations to enhance efficiency.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/5/1146/pdf

An Enhanced Lightweight Dynamic Pseudonym Identity Based Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme Using Wireless Sensor Networks for Agriculture Monitoring

In order to improve the survivability of active sensors, the problem of low probability of intercept (LPI) for a multi-sensor network system is studied in this paper. Two kinds of operational requirements are taken into account, the first of which is to ensure the survivability of sensors and the second is to improve the tracking accuracy of targets as much as possible. Firstly, the sensor tracking model and the posterior Carmer-Rao lower bound (PCRLB) of the target are presented to evaluate the sensor tracking benefits in next time. Then, a novel intercept probability factor (IPF) is proposed for multi-sensor multi-target tracking scenarios. At the basis of PCRLB and IPF, a myopic multi-sensor scheduling model for target tracking is set up to control the intercepted probability of sensors and improve the target tracking accuracy. At last, a fast solution algorithm based on an improved particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is given to obtain the optimal scheduling actions. Simulation of experimental results show that the proposed model can effectively control the intercepted risk of every sensor, which can also obtain better target tracking performance than existing multi-sensor scheduling methods.

Multi-Sensor Optimization Scheduling for Target Tracking Based on PCRLB and a Novel Intercept Probability Factor

The communication in military is vital for distribution of commands, logistical information and proper functionality of all units. It is must to have a secure channel through which critical information is exchanged in real time and privacy of information is maintained. Wireless sensor network can be used in military application for monitoring militant activities like tracking enemies and force protection. Wireless sensor network has set of distributes sensors nodes which are connected to each other. These sensor nodes are low powered, low cost, small in size and can do limited amount of computation. But wireless sensor network is vulnerable to various kinds of attacks like node capturing, eavesdropping in communication links and man in the middle or reply to a message. To ensure security, messages from wireless sensor networks must be encrypted. Many key agreement schemes have been proposed to ensure security but most of them are quite complex. In this paper we are proposing pre key distribution scheme for public key cryptography in military communication by establishing secure key arrangement between set of nodes in sensor network. This will improve performance in term of memory usage, resource consumption, resiliency against node capturing, scalability, resistant against node replication and security in information sharing.

Pallavi Singh

Papers

Security for wireless sensor networks in military operations