Light-weight framework for security-sensitive wireless sensor networks applications

For certain security-sensitive wireless sensor network (WSN) applications, physical location information of the sensor nodes must not be disclosed to any unauthorised entity. During the localisation phase for such applications the physical locations of sensor nodes are kept secret. Globally, a number of secure location estimation schemes have been proposed from various perspectives, but some important constraints of sensor nodes are often ignored. The considered limitations during design of those schemes vary with respect to varying research perspective. In this study, we propose a novel security framework for secure location estimation of sensor nodes suitable for security-sensitive WSN applications. The proposed framework aims to provide security, scalability, adaptability and optimise power consumption during the secure location estimation phase of a wireless sensor network. The designed framework consists of a two-way authentication scheme, a light-weight encryption mechanism and a novel secure key generation algorithm. The study discusses strengths of the components if used for secure localisation individually, as well as when used together as interactive parts of a security framework for WSN applications.