MiniSec: A Secure Sensor Network Communication Architecture

Secure sensor network communication protocols need to provide three basic properties: data secrecy, authentication, and replay protection. Secure sensor network link layer protocols such as Tiny- Sec (C. Karlof et al., 2004) and ZigBee (2005) enjoy significant attention in the community. However, TinySec achieves low energy consumption by reducing the level of security provided. In contrast, ZigBee enjoys high security, but suffers from high energy consumption. MiniSec is a secure network layer that obtains the best of both worlds: low energy consumption and high security. MiniSec has two operating modes, one tailored for single-source communication, and another tailored for multi-source broadcast communication. The latter does not require per-sender state for replay protection and thus scales to large networks. We present a publicly available implementation of MiniSec for the Telos platform, and experimental results demonstrate our low energy utilization.