Design of a novel lightweight key establishment mechanism for smart home systems

Abstract

Nowadays there has been a tremendous increase in the use of Smart Home Systems (SHSs) due to its various benefits like increased human comfort, optimized use of electricity, etc. These SHSs are altering human requirements and making human beings more dependent on them. In smart home environments, there are various low capacity devices (microcontrollers and sensors) connected through wireless networks. The smart devices (SDs) in the network must communicate with adequate security. Due to resource constraints like low processing power and low space, there is a lack of standard security mechanism which can provide adequate security. This research work introduces a novel key establishment mechanism for smart home systems. Proposed mechanism provides solution against various security attacks like replay, masquerade, denial of service, eavesdropping etc. We demonstrate the feasibility of proposed mechanism using proof of concept and evaluate results for showing the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.