Title: Analysis of routing security-energy trade-offs in wireless sensor networks

Authors: Jamal N. Al-Karaki

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Hashemite University, Zarka 13115, Jordan

Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are expected to be deployed on a large scale in the near future. WSNs play a key role in gathering information about various environmental phenomena. When sensor nodes are deployed in hostile environments or in some security-sensitive applications, some security measures such as confidentiality and integrity are highly required. Although, a significant number of researchers have put effort on developing sensor network structure and routing protocols, very less emphasis was given to the security issues. For example, many routing protocols for WSNs have been proposed, but most of them have been designed without security in mind. In this paper, security challenges and problems in WSNs are first analysed and summarised. An overview of the current solutions on secure routing in WSNs is then briefly described. Finally, a secure routing protocol for large scale WSNs, called Secure and Energy Efficient Protocol (SEEP) is presented. SEEP operates on a clustered network and provides security at both intra- and inter-cluster levels. The strength of SEEP stems from its ability to meet conflicting goals of providing high-level security while maximising energy efficiency. Performance evaluation of the proposed protocol show that SEEP can achieve a better level of security with less computational and communication overhead when compared to other schemes.

Keywords: wireless sensor networks; WSNs; routing security; energy efficiency; performance trade-offs; protocols; wireless networks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSN.2006.011774

International Journal of Security and Networks, 2006 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.147 - 157

Published online: 21 Dec 2006 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article