Multi-Tiered Communication Security Schemes in
Wireless Ad-Hoc Sensor Networks
ACEEE International Journal on Network Security, 3 (4):
6 (October 2012)Abstract
Networks of wireless micro-sensors for monitoring
physical environments have emerged as an important new
application area for wireless technology. Key attributes of
these new types of networked systems are the severely
constrained computational and energy resources and an ad
hoc operational environment. This paper is a study of the
communication security aspects of these networks. Resource
limitations and specific architecture of sensor networks call
for customized security mechanisms. Our approach is to
classify the types of data existing in sensor networks, and
identify possible communication security threats according
to that classification. We propose a communication security
scheme where for each type of data we define a corresponding
security mechanism. By employing this multi-tiered security
architecture where each mechanism has different resource
requirements, we allow for efficient resource management,
which is essential for wireless sensor networks.