A Hybrid Cryptography and End-to-end Security Model for Wireless Sensor Netwoks

Abstract Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is an interconnected and infrastructure-less wireless network. It is deployed in many wireless sensors in an ad-hoc manner to monitor the system, physical or environmental conditions. Wireless sensor networks are used to develop the applications in healthcare, agriculture, vehicle network, defense, etc. Due to this network's need to provide proper security techniques to ensure secure communication. The hybrid cryptographic approach is suitable for WSN because it can take care of sensor's challenges like computation power, storage capability and energy. Symmetric-key cryptography is used to track only one key for the encryption and decryption process. So its computation speed is high. An asymmetric key is used to share information in a very secure way. Both can provide more security against attacks in wireless networks. A new two-phase cryptographic technique has been developed in this work that uses both symmetric and asymmetric methods. In the proposed algorithm, advanced encryption standards (AES) and Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) are used in different phases of the algorithm. Because symmetric key cryptographic techniques provide a high level of security, and asymmetric key cryptography provides easier key management. phase 1 has been developed using the AES algorithm. In phase 2, RSA has been used, and all phases are executed in parallel. The proposed algorithm provides better encryption, decryption and total execution time when compared to the existing algorithms.