A Low Computational Complexity Authentication Scheme in Underwater Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) are vulnerable to attack because of the broadcast nature of the transmission. The sensor nodes in UWSN are highly constrained in terms of computational capabilities and communication bandwidth. Authentication schemes for ground WSNs might not be applicable for UWSNs due to their less computation and communication capacity. Thus, it is necessary to design special schemes tailored to underwater environments. In this paper, a low computational complexity authentication scheme is proposed. By using Vandermonde matrix, we replace the matrix multiplication by matrix addition to greatly reduce the computation overhead. Moreover, our scheme is self-correctable and irreversible which further enhances the security of the UWSNs. Experiment results indicate our algorithm has advantages in energy and time consumption over traditional RSA and Blom's scheme.