Performance evaluation of key disclosure delay-based schemes in wireless sensor networks

Broadcast source authentication is a critical security service in wireless sensor networks which is still in its infancy. This service allows senders to broadcast messages to multiple receivers in a secure way. This paper evaluates the integration of staggered authentication in multi-level μTesla source authentication protocol called staggered multilevel μTesla. These two protocols are evaluated in terms of authentication delay, authentication probability, number of forged packets in the receiver´s buffer, delay of forged packets in the receiver´s buffer, memory, and energy consumption overhead. Simulation results show that these two protocols introduce negligible overhead without impeding the system performance. Moreover, staggered multi-level μTesla achieves better performance compared to multi-level μTesla, when reducing the average number and the delay of forged packets in the receiver´s buffer.