A Hierarchical Authentication Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) refers to a group of autonomous sensors capable of collecting environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, and pressure. In addition, WSNs may be deployed in a risky region where sensor nodes are equipped to track suspicious targets and monitor harmful activities. In such scenarios, security is crucial and challenging. Such applications require top security, such as authentication, confidentiality, and integrity. In this paper, we focus on the authentication service in wireless senor network. Authentication is validity of entities and is considered the first line of defense against malicious attacks. With high security requirements, we assume sensor nodes are equipped with sufficient resources and are capable of performing advanced cryptographic operations. We propose a simple authentication protocol for wireless sensor networks based on distributed clustering and asymmetric cryptographic algorithms.