SECURE DATA DISSEMINATION PROTOCOL IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS USING XOR NETWORK CODING

Jisha Mary Jose, Jomina John

Abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are basically distributed networks or a collection of sensor nodes which collect information which are used to analyse physical or environmental conditions. WSNs are usually setup in remote and hostile areas and work in extreme conditions. Applications of WSN include habitat monitoring, industrial applications, battlefield surveillance, smart homes etc. Most of them require regular updating of software in sensor nodes through the wireless channel for efficient management and working. So it is necessary to spread data through the wireless medium after the nodes are deployed. This is known as data dissemination or network reprogramming. A good data dissemination protocol must be fast, secure, reliable and energy efficient. To achieve these we can make use of network coding techniques which reduces the number of retransmissions due to any packet drops. But network coding increases the chance of various kinds of network attacks. Also to avoid spreading of malicious code in the network, each sensor node has to authenticate its received code before propagating it further. So here a novel dissemination protocol is introduced based on simple cryptographic techniques which prevents pollution and DoS attacks and at the same time achieves fastness using the technique of network coding.

Keywords: wireless sensor network; dissemination; reprogramming; network coding; security; pollution attack.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0327011