A Wireless Sensor Network Architecture for Homeland Security Application

Abstract

This paper introduces an innovative wireless sensor network architecture, which has intrinsic reliability and can therefore be used for some components of homeland security applications such as intrusion detection. The proposed architecture includes a set of communication protocols in the different layers of the model. DTSN is a transport protocol used for reliable data transfer and DSDV is a routing protocol. The distributed and reactive data storage is realized using the tinyDSM middleware. The architecture provides also security features such as data secrecy and integrity. The cipher means used for this are ECC and SkipJack which have been developed for wireless sensor networks. Our homeland security architecture has been implemented as a demonstrator using 15 MicaZ motes equipped with acoustic and passive infra red sensors. This paper provides insight into the architecture and presents the main lessons learnt from a prototype demonstrator.