Compression and Security Platform for the Testing of Wireless Sensor Network Nodes

This thesis considers the in-field testing of wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes as a means of providing increased network uptime. Such nodes operate with strict limits on energy, cost, computing power, and are prone to attack. While testing through softwarebased self-test (SBST) programs has advantages on WSN nodes, energy efficiency can be increased by compressing SBST programs before distributing them. Of several compression schemes considered for the task, the BSTW algorithm with Rice coding demonstrates node energy savings while providing a low memory footprint and good compression ratios. Test security is provided through a multi-layer scheme which uses a wireless transceiver chip to offload AES protocol cryptographic functions. The entire security scheme is found to add only approximately 2.5% to the energy needs of SBST program distribution. Finally, a testing protocol is created to combine high-level testing commands with the compression and security schemes.