Secure Neighbor Discovery Using Symmetric Link Management in Tactical Sensor Networks
Kelvin T Chew, Preetha Thulasiraman · 2018
Tactical Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provide a low-signature communications system that can be used for a wide variety of military applications. However, these networks are vulnerable to intrusion and must balance security with performance and longevity. The neighbor discovery process in a WSN is vital for nodes to maintain network connectivity, but it introduces security vulnerabilities. In addition, existing protocols for securing the neighbor discovery process use public key encryption (PKE), which is computationally expensive for low-powered, resource-constrained IEEE 802.15.4 enabled sensor devices. Therefore, a lightweight algorithm to secure the neighbor discovery process is necessary to prevent unauthorized nodes from accessing network data and resources. We develop a key management algorithm that modifies the commonly used Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) and Secure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) protocol. We replace PKE in NPD and SEND with a symmetric encryption algorithm, AES, to allow for energy efficiency. In addition, we implement the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm for symmetric key management. We simulate our algorithm in MATLAB to demonstrate its effectiveness in securing the neighbor discovery protocol while providing energy and message efficiency and key security.