Access control protocol with node privacy in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

For preventing malicious nodes joining wireless sensor networks (WSNs), an access control mechanism is necessary for the trustworthy cooperation between the nodes. In addition to access control, recently, privacy has been an important topic regarding how to achieve privacy without disclosing the real identity of communicating entities in the WSNs. Based on elliptic curve cryptography, in this paper, we present an access control protocol with node privacy (called ACP) for the WSN. The proposed scheme not only accomplishes the node authentication but also provides the identity privacy (i.e., source to destination and vice-versa) for the communicating entities. Compared with the current state of the art, the proposed solution can defend actively against attacks. The efficacy and the efficiency of the proposed ACP are confirmed through the test bed analysis and performance evaluations.