Lightweight Aggregated Data Encryption for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

• Published in: IEEE sensors letters 2021-04, Vol.5 (4), p.1-4
• Main Authors: Harn, Lein, Hsu, Ching-Fang, Xia, Zhe, He, Zhangqing
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agglomeration; aggregated data encryption; Data aggregation; Data collection; Data communication; Data encryption; Data management; Encryption; Lightweight; Meteorological data; multiple pairwise shared keys; Nodes; path-oriented; Protocols; Public key; Receivers; Sensor applications; Sensors; Traffic information; Wireless networks; Wireless sensor networks; wireless sensor networks (WSNs) security
• ISSN: 2475-1472; 2475-1472
• DOI: 10.1109/LSENS.2021.3063326

The primary task of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is to collect various types of data, for example, weather data, traffic data, etc. Collected data in WSNs are different from most data transmitted in digital communication applications. Most collected data in WSNs contain only few bits of information, but most data in data communication applications contain a large number of bits. All existing data encryptions in WSNs use conventional symmetric-key encryptions (e.g., advanced encryption standard (AES)) in which each large-size key is used to encrypt a block of large-size of data (e.g., a fixed block size of 128 bit in AES), and the security is based on a large-size of pairwise shared key (e.g., 128/192/ 256 bits in AES) between the sender node and the receiver node. Obviously, these conventional encryptions are not suitable for WSNs since the size of keys are much larger than the size of data. We propose a novel data encryption, in which it encrypts only few bits of data, and the security is based on multiple pairwise shared keys with short length. The encryption speed is much faster than conventional symmetric encryptions. Data aggregation is an efficient way to transmit data in a network. In the past, most encrypted data aggregations were designed based on public-key based homomorphic encryption. Public-key encryptions need time-consuming computation, so these schemes are not suitable for applications in WSNs. Most data in WSNs are routed through a path from the source node to the receiver node, which involves multiple sensor nodes. Our encrypted data aggregation is also called path-oriented data encryption. When multiple data are collected in WSNs, our scheme allows sensors in the path to aggregate all collected data in a piggyback ride. Our proposed encrypted data aggregation is a lightweight solution, which is suitable for applications in WSNs.