Using On-chip cryptographic units for security in wireless sensor networks

This paper explores the use of On-chip cryptographic units for implementing security in low cost wireless sensor networks. The objective of this research is to reduce the deployment time and computational complexity of security protocols in WSNs, whilst keeping security related performance parameters at par with the current state-of-the-art. A method is proposed to continue using simple radio transreceiver for communication while ensuring that the information contained therein is sufficiently secure, without increasing processing time significantly. An off-the-shelf SoC (NXP MK64Fx series) with an on-chip memory mapped cryptographic unit is used as a test platform. The results demonstrate that without any loss in security parameters like key space and adversary's advantage, we are still able to achieve a low cost and low complexity solution. We have shown that the core protocol stacks of simple radio transreceivers can be made secure without significantly increasing processing time in the system. Such an approach provides greater flexibility in controlling the security parameters while allowing for greater optimization of the system.