Design and implementation of a secure data link layer protocol for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is caused by a lot of vulnerability because of factors such as hardware constraints of the sensor nodes, wireless communication medium, real-time computing, heterogeneous structure, large number of nodes, scalability, mobility, weight and cost requirements of application environment. In sensitive WSNs applications like surveillance of enemy lines or border areas security protocols must be used which providing confidential data transfer from sensors to base station. Security protocol must be developed with security requirements for WSNs which are Data Confidentiality, Data Integrity, Data Freshness, Data Authentication, Availability and the idea with high security ? low energy consumption. Also, it is deficiency that most of the proposed security solutions evaulated on simulation environment not on sensor platforms. Therefore, security protocols must be implemented on sensor nodes for they can be used directly in applications requiring security. Security solutions in the literature only found TinySec and MiniSec implemented on sensor nodes. However, the existing security protocols have deficiency such as key size, usability, data integrity, etc. In this study, a new data link layer security protocol developed which have data confidentiality, data integrity, data freshness, data authentication, availability and also energy efficient. Moreover, the protocol implemented on the sensor nodes. The security has been increased in the developed protocol. Also we have been obtained better results than TinySec in energy consumption and memory usage which are very important for WSNs. However in the delay criterion, our protocol increased negligible level than TinySec.