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Combining Encryption and Compression in Wireless Sensor Networks

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Abstract

More and more, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are making their way out of the laboratory and into real-world deployments where they must be concerned with issues of security. These networks of motes are also being tasked with sensing and monitoring duties that often require high-fidelity data to be delivered from individual nodes, a situation which precludes the use of data aggregation and other techniques to reduce the volume of sensing data by condensing it within the network. This paper makes a case for why continued research in the area of joint compression and encryption is relevant to the field of wireless sensor networks and presents an approach based on the LZW algorithm combined with cryptographically strong pseudo-random number generators.

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Notes

  1. compress refused to create an output file. The benefits of the BWT stage in bzip2 for this data set can be observed in the high compression ratio achieved.

  2. The software is freely available for download but required some modifications in order to compile either under Linux or Windows. Please contact the authors if instructions are desired.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Washington State University, Vancouver, WA, USA

    Tony Mancill & Orest Pilskalns

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  1. Tony Mancill
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  2. Orest Pilskalns
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Correspondence to Orest Pilskalns.

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Mancill, T., Pilskalns, O. Combining Encryption and Compression in Wireless Sensor Networks. Int J Wireless Inf Networks 18, 39–49 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10776-010-0127-8

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