Secure Authentication Scheme Using Diffie–Hellman Key Agreement for Smart IoT Irrigation Systems

Smart irrigation is considered one of the most significant agriculture management systems worldwide, considering the current context of water scarcity. There is a clear consensus that such smart systems will play an essential role in achieving the economic growth of other vital sectors. In general, the consequences of global warming and the unavailability of clean water sources for the agricultural sector are clear indications that the demand for these systems will increase in the near future, especially considering the recent expansions in the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies, which have been employed in the development of such systems. An obvious result is that security challenges will be one of the main obstacles to attaining the widespread adoption of such systems. Therefore, this paper proposes a secure authentication scheme using Diffie–Hellman key agreement for smart IoT irrigation systems using WSNs. This scheme is based on Diffie–Hellman and one-way hash cryptographic functions in order to support the basic security services with a high data rate and ability to resist well-known attacks. The Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic model is used to verify the proposed scheme formally. Based on various possible attack scenarios, a resistance analysis of the proposed scheme is discussed. Further analyses are performed in terms of the storage size, intercommunication, and running time costs. Therefore, the proposed scheme not only can be considered a secure authentication scheme but is also practical for smart IoT irrigation systems due to its reasonable efficiency factors.