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RiSeG: a ring based secure group communication protocol for resource-constrained wireless sensor networks

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Abstract

Securing group communication in wireless sensor networks has recently been extensively investigated. Many works have addressed this issue, and they have considered the grouping concept differently. In this paper, we consider a group as being a set of nodes sensing the same data type, and we alternatively propose an efficient secure group communication scheme guaranteeing secure group management and secure group key distribution. The proposed scheme (RiSeG) is based on a logical ring architecture, which permits to alleviate the group controller’s task in updating the group key. The proposed scheme also provides backward and forward secrecy, addresses the node compromise attack, and gives a solution to detect and eliminate the compromised nodes. The security analysis and performance evaluation show that the proposed scheme is secure, highly efficient, and lightweight. A comparison with the logical key hierarchy is preformed to prove the rekeying process efficiency of RiSeG. Finally, we present the implementation details of RiSeG on top of TelosB sensor nodes to demonstrate its feasibility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CES Research Lab, National School of Engineers of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia

    Omar Cheikhrouhou & Mohamed Abid

  2. CISTER Research Unit, Polytechnic Institute of Porto (ISEP/IPP), Portugal, Al-Imam Mohamed Bin Saud University, College of Computer Science and Information Systems, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Anis Koubâa

  3. Dipartimento di Ingegneria della Informazione, University of Pisa, Largo Lazzarino 1, 56100, Pisa, Italy

    Gianluca Dini

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  1. Omar Cheikhrouhou
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  2. Anis Koubâa
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  3. Gianluca Dini
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  4. Mohamed Abid
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Correspondence to Omar Cheikhrouhou.

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Cheikhrouhou, O., Koubâa, A., Dini, G. et al. RiSeG: a ring based secure group communication protocol for resource-constrained wireless sensor networks. Pers Ubiquit Comput 15, 783–797 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0365-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0365-5

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