978 - 988 - 98671 - 9 - 5 Wce 2008

Ensuring network security in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) indeed is critical. Due to the data-centric multi-hop communication in WSNs, an essential consideration in the security solutions for WSNs is to ensure security features at the link layer. The link layer security can be implemented in hardware or in software. The existing software based link layer security architectures do not offer configurable security. In this paper, we propose a novel design of link layer security architecture for WSNs. The principal characteristics of the design we propose, is the flexible and configurable architecture, with respect to the actual security attributes demanded by the application. Our design is based on the premise that when the link layer architecture is implemented in software, flexibility and seamless integration of the application code become the prime advantages. We also emphasize that with the increasing computational, storage and bandwidth resources of the sensor nodes, we can get good performance and efficiency from software implementation of link layer architecture also.