Viability of multivariate cryptosystems for WSN

In a Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), nodes observe their environment and forward the sensed data to a sink. Security of the sensor nodes and the sensed data in transit is vital for such networks. Cryptographic techniques can be employed to achieve confidentiality, integrity and other security needs of the network. However, due to resource constraints existing cryptographic mechanisms that need large computation power, memory and communication bandwidth are impractical for sensor networks. To provide security, less resource intensive cryptographic systems need to be explored. In the present work, different Multivariate public key cryptosystems (MPKC) have been examined to Elliptic curve based cryptosystem (ECC). Results indicate that the small computation time & memory requirements make MPKC schemes attractive for WSN security.