Implementation of RSA security protocol for sensor network security: Design and network lifetime analysis

Abstract

Application of Wireless sensor network (WSN) is increasing in a rapid speed. As sensor networks may interact with sensitive data and operate in hostile unattended environments, it is imperative that security concern be addressed from the beginning of the system. But sensor networks also introduce severe resource constraints due to their lack of data storage and power. Both of these represent major obstacles to the implementation of traditional computer security techniques in a wireless sensor network. There has to be some compromise between the security and the energy. Asymmetric protocol like RSA has not been implemented due to high power constrain and for memory issue. In this paper, we have shown that RSA can be implemented for sensor in an efficient manner by using optimized computation. We have simulated the protocol in NS2.34 platform. The energy requirement gives an optimistic result quite similar to symmetric protocol energy requirement for sensor.