Collusion-Aware Privacy-Preserving Range Query in Tiered Wireless Sensor Networks†

Wireless sensor network is an important part of the Internet of Things. Preservation of privacy and integrity in wireless sensor networks is extremely urgent and challenging. To address this problem, we propose PPKN, an efficient and privacy-preserving k-NN query protocol in two-tiered wireless sensor networks. Our proposal prevents adversaries from gaining sensitive information of both queries issued by users and data collected by sensor nodes while allows the sink to verify whether results are valid. It offers confidentiality of queries and data by constructing a special code, provides integrity verification by the correlation among data. Moreover, by the implementation of KNQ query framework, PPKN also achieves high efficient in query response and energy consumption. Finally, the theoretical analysis and experiment results show the high performance of PPKN in terms of privacy preservation and query efficiency.

Internet of Things (IOT) is experiencing a super-fast growing phase. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), as the “five sense organs” and teleneuron of IOT, is developing fast along. Owing to the application-oriented characteristics of WSN, WSN applications may differ enormously in implementation methods. The WSN developers may have to rewrite the code for each and every application. Along with the increasing demand to WSN applications, WSN developers may have heavier tasks of programming for these applications. Thanks to TinyOS and NesC, an operating system and programming language designed especially for WSN, raises the WSN application's programming to a higher level. Large number of supported sensor hardware plus system provided and user-de-fined libraries eases WSN application programmers' jobs. How-ever, the massive amount of nodes' communication and networking, and security protection slows down the development pace. A unified and empirical WSN application implementation platform is one of the available solutions to the problem. This paper introduces an empirical WSN application implementation platform, which avails the WSN developers build an application with unified code template and network packet generation and processing strategies.

Wireless sensor networks are a promising application of the Internet of Things in the sustainable development of smart cities, and have been afforded significant attention since first being proposed. Authentication protocols aim to protect the security and confidentiality of legitimate users when accessing and transmitting data. However, existing protocols may suffer from one or more security flaws. Recently, Butt et al. proposed an energy-efficient three-factor authentication protocol for wireless sensor networks. However, their protocol is vulnerable to several attacks, and lacks certain security properties. In this paper, the causes of these design flaws are analyzed. Furthermore, we propose a novel three-factor authentication protocol (password, smart card, and biometric information) for wireless sensor networks in Internet of Things contexts. A dynamic anonymous strategy is designed to prevent privacy disclosure and to resist sensor node capture attacks, tracking attacks, and desynchronization attacks. The Find–Guess model and random oracle model are combined to prove the security of the proposed protocol. A comparative analysis with related schemes shows that the proposed protocol has higher security and is able to maintain a low computational overhead.

The appearance of wireless sensor networks has attracted worldwide attention. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) consist of wirelessly interconnected sensor nodes organised arbitrarily or deterministically in an environmental area which can gather, distribute and route information in different application areas. Power consumption in these networks is the foremost problem. WSNs are a recent generation of sensor networks, have an ample range of applications, their expansion and application will convey about extensive impact in human life and construction of all areas. Some of the applications include disaster management, landslide detection, glacial monitoring, wildlife tracking, healthcare, military applications, environmental monitoring, security surveillance, industrial process control and a large number of applications to robotics and Internet of Things (IOT) projects. This paper will demonstrate the elementary description of WSN followed by different energy-efficient power consumption protocols. Here we have performed the comparative performance analysis of different energy-efficient protocols. In our work we have compared MODLEACH with TSEP followed by TSEP with RELSEP.

Fog-enhanced Internet of Things (IoT), which can locally process data at the network edge for better response to the IoT field and pre-computation for further efficient process at the cloud side, has attracted substantial studies in recent years. However, as the fog device is not fully trustable at the network edge, more advancement in efficiency and privacy should be considered to persuade enterprises to migrate to fog and cloud environments. With this in mind, in this paper, we propose a new communication-efficient privacy-preserving range query in the fog-enhanced IoT. The proposed scheme is characterized by employing Paillier homomorphic cryptosystem and ingenious Bloom filter data structure for simultaneously achieving better privacy and higher efficiency in the count aggregation in a privacy-preserving range query scenario. More precisely, $(n+|E|)\log n$-bit communication efficiency can be achieved by our proposed scheme where $n, |E|$ are respectively the range size and the ciphertext size. Detailed security analysis shows that our proposed scheme really achieves the privacy preservation in the range query. Extensive experiments are conducted, and the results demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed scheme.

Top-k query is one of important queries in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It provides the k highest or lowest data collected in the entire network. Due to abundant resources and high efficiency, many future large-scale WSNs are expected to follow a two-tiered architecture with resource-rich master nodes. However, the sensor network is unattended and insecure. Since master nodes store data collected by sensor nodes and respond to queries issued by users, they are attractive to adversaries. It is challenging to process top-k query while protecting sensitive data from adversaries. To address this problem, we propose SET, a framework for secure and efficient top-k query in two-tiered WSNs. A renormalized arithmetic coding is designed to enable each master node to obtain exact top-k result without knowing actual data. Besides, a verification scheme is presented to allow the sink to detect compromised master nodes. Finally, theoretical analysis and experimental results confirm the efficiency, accuracy and security of our proposal.

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables all objects to connect to the Internet and exchange data via different emerging technologies, which makes the intelligent identification and management a reality. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), as a crucial basis of IoT, have been applied in many fields like smart health care and smart transportation. With the development of WSNs, data security has attracted more and more attention, and user authentication is a popular mechanism to ensure the information security of WSNs. Recently, many authentication mechanisms for wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) have been proposed, but most of the protocols cannot achieve the features of local password change and forward secrecy while resisting stolen smart card attack. To enhance the security based on previous work, an ECC-based secure three-factor authentication protocol with forward secrecy for WMSN is proposed in this paper. It utilizes a fuzzy commitment scheme to handle the biometric information. Meanwhile, fuzzy verifier and honey_list techniques are used to solve the contradiction of local password verification and mobile device lost attack. The security of our protocol is evaluated by provable security, Proverif tool, and information analysis. Besides, the comparisons with the relevant protocols are given, and the results indicate that our protocol is robust and secure for WMSN systems.

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a collection of sensor nodes which can monitor the physical activities and attributes of a whole spectrum of objects and environments. The purpose of collecting this data and processing it in a meaningful manner requires that it adds significant value to the end user. WSN are deployed ever more frequently and applications vary from providing an early alert system on the activity of a volcano, to controlling the movements of livestock so that farming output can be maximized using virtual fencing. There are many challenges facing wireless sensor networks, with one being found in the uniqueness of each application, and challenges arise when WSN developers try to adequately test such applications when they are deployed with varying numbers of nodes, in all ranges of environmental conditions. To implement such systems in hardware involves a huge financial investment and from a development perspective prevents the developer from changing hardware platforms or communications protocols throughout the testing phase without incurring further financial hardship. Due to this fact, tools which can accurately simulate the behavior and performance of real world WSN applications are in high demand and a crucial aspect in the continued growth of WSN in the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper presents a cloud based system which makes various simulation platforms available to multiple users who wish to test WSN routing protocols or the hardware constraints of the various WSN platforms. This simulation testbed is hosted on a Dell PowerEdge R720 server in the communications laboratory in the University of Limerick and it is made available to users through the use of a virtual machine. This offers users access to many of the popular WSN simulation environments with vast computing resources and storage but at far reduced costs for protocol simulation.

Serialized optimal relay schedules in two-tiered wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, secure MAX/MIN query processing is a challenging issue, and it is useful in fields, where security is necessary. In this paper, we propose a secure MAX/MIN query processing method in two-tiered wireless sensor networks. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first work that can achieve data privacy protection and query result integrity verification simultaneously. Three schemes, naïve secure MAX/MIN query (NSMQ), complicated secure MAX/MIN query (CSMQ), and OSMQ, are designed to achieve secure MAX/MIN queries. In NSMQ, we present an intuitive and baseline solution that makes the master nodes return all the ciphertext as the query result. However, it may incur high query communication cost. To address this limitation, a CSMQ scheme is designed, which introduces the comparable factors (c-factors) based on 0-1 encoding verification to find the accurate encrypted query result from the stored ciphertext of the master nodes even when their real values are unknown. Then, a broadcasting method is introduced to generate minor-node-sets as the proofs for verifying the integrity of the query results. CSMQ can significantly reduce the query communication cost, but its in-cell communication cost is high because of the extra data submission and broadcasting. To balance the in-cell and query communication cost, OSMQ, as an optimized version of CSMQ, is proposed to address the minor-node-set compression and random c-factor selection. The proposed schemes are built upon symmetric encryption and hash-based message authentication coding primitives. OSMQ can prevent compromised master nodes from obtaining the plaintext of private data and force them to return integrity-satisfying query results to avoid being detected. Extensive theoretical and experimental studies have been conducted to demonstrate the efficacy and efficiency of the proposed schemes.

Consistent data delivery in constrained networks such as wireless sensor networks (WSN), which has a significant role in Internet of Things (IoT), is vital due to the high probability of packet loss, not only because of the unreliable channel but also from link and buffer congestions. Thus, a reliable transport protocol should be used. Data caching at intermediate nodes is one way of improving the reliability performance of transport protocols in WSNs. However, it is not yet known up to what extent data caching alone can alleviate congestion in WSNs. This study investigates and analyses how a cache-based transport protocol, that has no congestion control mechanism and has a fixed transmission window, performs under congestion states. The transport protocol, called DTSN, is evaluated under link and buffer congestion states and the optimal performance is determined in terms of goodput, transmission cost and cache hit metrics. The results of our analysis reveal that intermediate caching was able to perform significantly during congestions in WSN. However, the amount of traffic being sent and intermediate node's cache memory should be taken into account. The optimum caching performance during link contentions is reached at higher transmission window and cache size values, while for buffer congestions, it is achieved at lower transmission window but higher cache size values, respectively. These values obtained can guarantee optimum usage of cache while ensuring congestion avoidance. In addition, the correlation that is established can serve as a basis for developing congestion window management for transport protocols in WSN that employ data caching.

Using wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in delay and reliability critical environments is highly desired due to their unique advantages such as low cost, ease of deployment, and redundancy. However, successful deployment of resource-limited WSNs in such applications requires strict quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning techniques to meet the desired latency and reliability targets of those applications. Implementation of QoS techniques in WSNs is significantly challenging since WSNs have been initially devised for low-data-rate non-real-time applications. Therefore, WSN designers and developers resort to different cross-layer interaction and optimization techniques to provision QoS in WSNs. In this paper, we present a survey on the state of the art of cross-layer QoS approaches in wireless terrestrial sensor networks to achieve delay and reliability bounds in critical applications. Our paper provides a unique classification of cross-layer QoS approaches in WSNs that allows surveying a large amount of studies with utmost clarity. Furthermore, we highlight the main challenges of implementing QoS protocols in WSNs and present an overview of QoS-aware WSN applications.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) consist of wirelessly interconnected sensor nodes which can collect, deliver and process information in different application areas. Power Consumption in these networks is a major problem. Some of the applications include landslide detection, glacial monitoring, wildlife tracking, health care, military applications, environmental monitoring and a large number of applications to robotics, “internet of things” projects. This paper will illustrate the fundamental characteristics of WSN followed by different power consumption protocols. Here we have performed the comparative performance analysis of different power consumption protocols.

The current scenario of the world needs enhanced medical technology along with reduced expenses in order to fulfill the good health of patients that are suffering from chronic diseases. Because of the increase in the demand of healthcare infrastructure, it is getting complex to build and provide world-class facilities in order to maintain the health of everyone. In recent years, there has been a huge advancement of wireless networks and electronics which directed to the development of wireless sensor network (WSN). It is considered that WSNs have the ability to change the future. These networks comprise several sensors which are low-powered nodes that can sense the data nearby, perform limited computations and can radio communicate with other nodes. The parameters which can be sensed by sensors can be temperature, light or vibrations. Wireless sensor networks are under rapid research all over the globe, and researchers are working on it meticulously. This technology has the capability to replace thousands of wires in medical field which can increase reliability and portability. This paper will investigate the current applications of WSNs utilized globally in healthcare system, the limitations removed after the development of WSNs, what are scientists still working on in order to remove the barriers healthcare industry is facing currently, and what led to the development and utilization of WSNs in healthcare, current state of the art and need to integrate this technology in accordance with current medical scenario to enhance the healthcare system with limited medical expenses.

Industry 4.0 (I4.0), also called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, promotes the intelligence of manufacturing. The introduced new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), big data, and cloud technology have brought the new model of production, also the chances and vision for industries. Construction 4.0 refers the spirit of I4.0 and introduces computerization and intellectualization applications in construction domain, which integrates existing engineering techniques, processes, and requirements and then establishes an adaptive, resource efficient, and smart construction process. The most representative technology such as BIM (Building Information Modeling) which digitalizes and visualizes the construction project, integrates different kinds information into the digital model, enhances the management of all construction life cycle stages. Furthermore, IoT is considered to be the internet’s most revolutionary development, which connects millions of objects and devices and keeps increasing by surprising rapidity. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), the most key technology of IoT, was composed by different kind of sensors, control elements, and networks, which enables objects to have sensing, control and communicate capabilities. By WSN development, more and more facilities and buildings were enabled to have intelligent, human-like capabilities. In this chapter, the frameworks and applications are proposed for the integration of IoT technology and internet enabled physical devices in the construction industry, and the major advantages and challenges are explored and identified. Furthermore, a pilot study is introduced to illustrate the integration of WSN and BIM technologies for construction safety management as the example of IoT application. In the study, many WSN nodes were placed on an underground tunnel, which collected hazardous gas, monitored temperature and humidity information in real time, then all the conditions were fed back by a self-constituted network and dynamically displayed on a 3D BIM model. When an abnormal situation was detected in a location, the BIM model on a remote management system alerted the location by turning red, simultaneously, the flash alarm and ventilator on site also started automatically for evacuation alert and hazard removal. The system can much enhance human safety and reduce risk and operation cost in construction site management. Finally, the benefits, limitations, and suggestions are summarized for further research.