The ANGEL WSN Security Architecture

The EU funded ANGEL project focuses on the development and deployment of wireless sensor networks building ambient intelligence systems for assisted-living and personal health monitoring. The provision of security services such as confidentiality and authentication is a fundamental requirement for ANGEL in order to ensure the safety and privacy of the users; the technical realization is challenging due to the high mobility of users accessing a multitude of wireless sensor networks. Our security architecture ensures the secure deployment and efficient, yet secure operation of ANGEL systems. Based on keying-material distribution, we provide a solution for the secure configuration of sensors and gateways. This ensures that users can interact with their system in an easy, transparent and safe way. We further introduce a fast distributed key agreement protocol on top of ZigBee that enables very fast and efficient operation. Performance and security analysis point out the advantages of our new solution.