A Secure Communication Protocol between Sensor Nodes and Sink Node in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Abstract

Underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) have been receiving more and more attention due to their wide applications and the marine data collection is one of the important applications of UASNs. However, the openness and unreliability of underwater acoustic communication links and the easy capture of underwater wireless devices make UASNs vulnerable to various attacks. On the other hand, due to the limited resources of underwater acoustic network nodes, the high bit error rates, large and variable propagation delays, and low bandwidth of acoustic channels, many mature security mechanisms in terrestrial wireless sensor networks cannot be applied in the underwater environment [1]. In this paper, a secure communication protocol for marine data collection was proposed to ensure the confidentiality and data integrity of communication between under sensor nodes and the sink node in UASNs.