Data Protection Using Hierarchical and Dynamic Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem in Wireless Sensor Network

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), because of the absence of physical protection, the wireless connections are prone to different type of attacks. Therefore, security is a measure concern in WSN. Hence to provide security, Hierarchical and Dynamic Elliptic curve cryptosystem (HiDE) scheme is proposed. To serve a large amount of sensors, HiDE provides a hierarchical cluster-based framework consisting of a Backbone Network and several Area Clusters. Many Gateways connected together to form a Backbone Network. Sensor Nodes in the WSN are group together based on area to form an Area Cluster (AC). Area Cluster consists of Cluster Head (CH), Sensor Nodes and the Gateway. For energy efficient data transmission, Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) is used to select the Cluster Head dynamically. The Cluster Head collects the data from the Source Node and transmit it to the Destination through the Gateway (GW) in the Backbone Network. However, limited by the coverage of Gateway, Source Gateway may not be directly linked with the Destination Gateway in a single hop, so needs to hop through other Gateways to reach the Destination Area Cluster. Data encryption using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) provides high security with small key size than RSA. Key management includes key computation, key exchanges, and data encryption and decryption. Cluster-based cryptographic mechanism provides efficient energy utilization of sensor nodes along with security and low message overhead. Thus, HiDE can protect the confidentiality of sensitive data with low computation overhead, and keep appropriate network performance for Wireless Sensor Network.