Analyzing energy and time overhead of security mechanisms in Wireless Sensor Networks

The primary requirements of a successful wireless sensor network security architecture are confidentiality, integrity and authentication. Most of these security objectives can be addressed using appropriate hash functions and cryptography schemes. By applying these mechanisms, the energy consumption increases, shortening the sensor node lifetime. On the other hand, the selection of a highly secure encryption algorithm might lead to unacceptable computational time, taking into account the constrained processor power of the sensor nodes. This paper presents an overview of the results published in the literature regarding time and energy consumption overhead of hashing and encryption mechanisms in wireless sensor networks. The evaluation of these results helps on the selection of the appropriate algorithms, depending on the application.