Abstract:
Extensive research has been conducted in the field of wireless sensor
networks(WSNs). Both the academia and researchers have envisioned a broad range
of applications for WSNs. Many of these applications require varying levels of
security. Security is an attribute that is computational and communicational intensive.
Severe lack of resources and limited capability has made providing security a
challenging task in WSN. Therefore techniques need to be devised that provide
security without compromising the limited resources available to WSNs.
This thesis focuses on the design, implementation and analysis of an
Optimized Security Protocol (OSP) that fulfills the requirements of confidentiality,
authentication and integrity in WSNs. OSP fulfils requirements of high level security
without compromising resources. OSP architecture is based on the further
optimization of computations in the Rabbit stream cipher and reduction in
communication overhead to save sensor’s life time.
The proposed OSP has been implemented using power of TinyOS coupled
with NesC. In order to evaluate the system, several experiments have been carried out
with respect to encryption/ decryption of various data blocks. Evaluation of OSP has
been done by conducting a comprehensive efficiency analysis of the proposed
architecture. Furthermore, the results of execution time and memory footprint for OSP
have been compared to its cryptographic counterparts. The decrease in the memory
footprint and execution time proves that OSP is a very viable choice for WSNs. Since
OSP provides extensive security features, operates within the optimal ranges for
WSNs and outperforms existing security protocol for WSNs therefore this protocol
promises to be widely accepted.
