Secure Hierarchical Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Communication in wireless sensor networks uses the majority of a sensor's limited energy. Using aggregation in wireless sensor network reduces the overall communication cost. Security in wireless sensor networks entails many different challenges. Traditional end-to-end security is not suitable for use with in-network aggregation. A corrupted sensor has access to the data and can falsify results. Additively homomorphic encryption allows for aggregation of encrypted values, with the result being the same as the result when unencrypted data was aggregated. Using public key cryptography, digital signatures can be used to achieve integrity. We propose a new algorithm using homomorphic encryption and additive digital signatures to achieve confidentiality, integrity and availability for in-network aggregation in wireless sensor networks. We prove that our digital signature algorithm which is based on the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) is as secure as ECDSA.