Delay aware, reconfigurable security for embedded systems

Wireless embedded systems, especially life-critical body-area networks, need security in order to prevent unauthorized and malicious users from injecting traffic and accessing confidential data. Coupled with the security costs in system performance and power consumption, embedded systems are also restricted by the type of security that can fit in their limited memory. To address these issues, we introduce a Dynamic Security System (DYNASEC), a novel architecture that ensures message integrity and confidentiality in wireless embedded systems. A delay-aware heuristic adapts the security levels and the amount of sensor data transmitted in a sensor network to meet timing constraints. This experimental analysis on a reconfigurable electrocardiogram (ECG) application validates the efficacy of the DYNASEC architecture in a body area network. Our experiments demonstrate that DYNASEC enables lightweight medical embedded systems to dynamically optimize security levels to meet timing constraints in a body sensor network.