A symmetric cryptographic construct for securing wireless sensor network communications

Recent advances in the relevant technologies of contemporary wireless sensor nodes has motivated a growth in the deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSN) for commercial, non-commercial and research applications. In the aforementioned applications, it is often prudent to frustrate unauthorised wireless communications with WSN nodes. A symmetric cryptographic technique referred to as Authenticated-Encryption with Associated-Data (AEAD) can be employed to provide secure communication channels for authorised nodes in the specified WSN by providing both confidentiality and integrity security services to transmitted data. This paper introduces an adjustable one-pass block cypher-based AEAD construct that is named CypherCodex. CypherCodex is designed to operate in energy constrained wireless sensor nodes and WSN time-critical applications. CypherCodex is benchmarked in comparison against appropriate block cypher-based AEAD constructs. The results of the software simulation benchmark indicate that CypherCodex depending on its operational parameters; exhibited better performance regarding data processing throughput and processing efficiency for practical transmitted WSN data packets.