A robust and efficient neighborhood-based security protocol for wireless sensor networks

Due to the resource limitations of sensor nodes, providing security protocols is a particular challenge in sensor networks. A popular proposed method is the neighborhood based key agreement protocol (NEKAP), which is an improvement over the well-known Localized Encryption and Authentication Protocol (LEAP). NEKAP is an efficient and light-weight protocol, but includes loopholes through which adversaries may launch replay attack by successfully masquerading as legitimate nodes and thereby compromise the communications over the network. In this paper, we present a modified security protocol for wireless sensor networks. As in NEKAP and LEAP protocol, we provide four types of keys in each node, which adapt to different security requirements. In addition, we present a new key agreement protocol with low-overhead performance. Also the improvement on the performance is discussed and analyzed on several typical attacks found in wireless sensor networks, i.e., replay attack. The performance verification through using a qualitative analysis indicates that our new security protocol can enhance the security resilience of wireless sensor networks better than the conventional methods.