Hybrid cryptography for secure data communication in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Nodes in the wireless sensor networks (WSN) have limited battery power and deployed to run few days. In general, sensor nodes are placed at very complicated locations; therefore, charging or replacement of nodes battery is very difficult. Hence, it is highly unfavourable to use the complex data security method. The main objective of this paper is to develop an enhanced algorithm to provide secure data communication as well as to enhance the lifetime of the WSNs. We have developed a hybrid algorithm for the data encryption and decryption in WSN. As in symmetric approach the key sharing was a major issue, we have performed the key generation using ECC algorithm which is an asymmetric key algorithm, and using this key, we will encrypt and decrypt data using AES which is a symmetric key algorithm. Hence, we have developed an enhanced algorithm which exploits the advantages of the two algorithms. The proposed algorithm, which reduces complexity as compared with ECC, is used only for key generation and not for data encryption/decryption and it is more secure than AES as it has solved the problem of key sharing in AES.