Multi-layer and Clustering based Security Implementation for an IoT Environment

IoT devices are having many constraints related to computation power and memory etc. Many existing cryptographic algorithms of security could not work with IoT devices because of these constraints. Since the sensors are used in large amount to collect the relevant data in an IoT environment, and different sensor devices transmit these data as useful information, the first thing needs to be secure is the identity of devices. The second most important thing is the reliable information transmission between a sensor node and a sink node. While designing the cryptographic method in the IoT environment, programmers need to keep in mind the power limitation of the constraint devices. Mutual authentication between devices and encryption-decryption of messages need some sort of secure key. In the proposed cryptographic environment, there will be a hierarchical clustering, and devices will get registered by the authentication center at the time they enter the cluster. The devices will get mutually authenticated before initiating any conversation and will have to follow the public key protocol.

Novel approach for hybrid MAC scheme for balanced energy and transmission in sensor devices

<p><span>Hybrid medium access control (MAC) scheme is one of the prominent mechanisms to offer energy efficiency in wireless sensor network where the potential features for both contention-based and schedule-based approaches are mechanized. However, the review of existing hybrid MAC scheme shows many loopholes where mainly it is observed that there is too much inclusion of time-slotting or else there is an inclusion of sophisticated mechanism not meant for offering flexibility to sensor node towards extending its services for upcoming applications of it. Therefore, this manuscript introduces a novel hybrid MAC scheme which is meant for offering cost effective and simplified scheduling operation in order to balance the performance of energy efficiency along with data aggregation performance. The simulated outcome of the study shows that proposed system offers better energy consumption, better throughput, reduced memory consumption, and faster processing in contrast to existing hybrid MAC protocols.</span></p>

Game Theory-Based Energy-Efficient Clustering Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency is one of the critical challenges in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). WSNs collect and transmit data through sensor nodes. However, the energy carried by the sensor nodes is limited. The sensor nodes need to save energy as much as possible to prolong the network lifetime. This paper proposes a game theory-based energy-efficient clustering algorithm (GEC) for wireless sensor networks, where each sensor node is regarded as a player in the game. According to the length of idle listening time in the active state, the sensor node can adopt favorable strategies for itself, and then decide whether to sleep or not. In order to avoid the selfish behavior of sensor nodes, a penalty mechanism is introduced to force the sensor nodes to adopt cooperative strategies in future operations. The simulation results show that the use of game theory can effectively save the energy consumption of the sensor network and increase the amount of network data transmission, so as to achieve the purpose of prolonging the network lifetime.

IoT Based Non–Technical Loss Detection and Mitigation System for Power Distribution Networks

Electrical Energy crisis is a major problem faced in the world today and it’s increasingly significant in this part of Africa. A perfect solution seems not to be feasible as several solutions have been proposed in the past by various authors with little impact on the power sector. In this work, we present a method of Non-Technical Loss (NTL) detection consisting of a microcontroller interfaced with a current sensor that measures the current on the power line. A sensor node is placed at the supply end of the pole while two or more others sensor nodes are connected to the output of the pole depending on the number of consumers. The measured value of current is sent via the microcontroller to a web cloud that is accessible by the consumers and the utility company from any part of the world by simply logging on to the website; www.electricity-theft.herokuapp.com. The design uses the principle of Kirchhoff Current Law (KCL) to achieve this aim. The consumers can therefore monitor their power consumption from any location in the world and prevent theft on the network. The results obtained from the installation of the sensor nodes were analyzed using correlation and regression analysis. A correlation analysis of the data results gave us a correlation coefficient of 0.9802, while a regression analysis provided us with a linear relationship between the dependent and independent variable expressed mathematically thus Y = 0.916x + 0.254. A regression graph is also plotted. Furthermore, a T-Test and F-Test was conducted to statistically test the sensor nodes. A NodeMCU Wi-Fi microcontroller and a self-powered Phidget current sensor is used for the sensor node design. Communication between the sensor nodes is via Wi-Fi while a 4G router was used to provide internet services.

ECTS: Enhanced Centralized TSCH Scheduling with Packet Aggregation for Industrial IoT

The Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) has gained a lot of momentum thanks to the introduction of Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) in IEEE 802.15.4. At last, we can enjoy collision-free, low-latency wireless communication in challenging environments. Nevertheless, the fixed size of time slots in TSCH provides an opportunity for further enhancements. In this paper, we propose an enhanced centralized TSCH scheduling (ECTS) algorithm with simple packet aggregation while collecting data over a tree topology. Having in mind that the payload of a sensor node is rather short, we attempt to put more than one payload in one packet. Thus, we occupy just one cell to forward them. We investigated the schedule compactness of ECTS in Matlab, and we evaluated its operation, after implementing it in Contiki-NG, using Cooja. Our results show that ECTS with packet aggregation outperforms TASA in terms of slotframe duration and imposes fairness among the nodes in terms of latency. A validation exercise using real motes confirms its successful operation in real deployments.

ECTS: Enhanced Centralized TSCH Scheduling with Packet Aggregation for Industrial IoT

The Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) has gained a lot of momentum thanks to the introduction of Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) in IEEE 802.15.4. At last, we can enjoy collision-free, low-latency wireless communication in challenging environments. Nevertheless, the fixed size of time slots in TSCH provides an opportunity for further enhancements. In this paper, we propose an enhanced centralized TSCH scheduling (ECTS) algorithm with simple packet aggregation while collecting data over a tree topology. Having in mind that the payload of a sensor node is rather short, we attempt to put more than one payload in one packet. Thus, we occupy just one cell to forward them. We investigated the schedule compactness of ECTS in Matlab, and we evaluated its operation, after implementing it in Contiki-NG, using Cooja. Our results show that ECTS with packet aggregation outperforms TASA in terms of slotframe duration and imposes fairness among the nodes in terms of latency. A validation exercise using real motes confirms its successful operation in real deployments.

Highly Secured Dynamic Color QR Pattern Generation for Real Time Application

This work advances the state-of-art secured WBAN system and QR pattern enabled authentication for privacy measures. An attempt was made to integrate all the above process to build high performance WBAN system. In this work, a comprehensive statistical framework is developed with randomized key generation and secured cipher transformation for secured sensor node communication. We create primary colour channels based on three different QR codes that are widely used for colour printing and complementary channels for capturing colour images. Last but not least, we produced a colour QR pattern.

An Efficent Coverage and Maximization of Network Lifetime in WSN Through Metaheuristics

<span>In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), energy, connectivity, and coverage are the three most important constraints for guaranteed data forwarding from every sensor node to the base station. Due to continuous sensing and transmission tasks, the sensor nodes deplete more quickly and hence they seek the help of data forwarding nodes, called relay nodes. However, for a given set of sensor nodes, finding optimal locations to place relay nodes is a very challenging problem. Moreover, from the earlier studies, the relay node placement is defined as a non-deterministic polynomial tree hard (NP-Hard) problem. To solve this problem, we propose a multi-objective firefly algorithm-based relay node placement (MOFF-RNP) to deploy an optimal number of relay nodes while considering connectivity, coverage, and energy constraints. To achieve network lifetime, this work adopted energy harvesting capabilities to the sensor nodes and backup relay strategy such that every sensor node is always connected to at least one relay to forward the data. The optimal relay placement is formulated as an objective function and MOFF is applied to achieve a better solution. Extensive Simulations are carried out over the proposed model to validate the performance and the obtained results are compared with state-of-art methods)</span>

Proof of concept for lightweight PUF-based authentication protocol using NodeMCU ESP8266

Wireless sensor node is the foundation for building the next generation of ubiquitous networks or the so-called internet of things (IoT). Each node is equipped with sensing, computing devices, and a radio transceiver. Each node is connected to other nodes via a wireless sensor network (WSN). Examples of WSN applications include health care monitoring, and industrial monitoring. These applications process sensitive data, which if disclosed, may lead to unwanted implications. Therefore, it is crucial to provide fundamental security services such as identification and authentication in WSN. Nevertheless, providing this security on WSN imposes a significant challenge as each node in WSN has a limited area and energy consumption. Therefore, in this study, we provide a proof of concept of a lightweight authentication protocol by using physical unclonable function (PUF) technology for resource-constrained wireless sensor nodes. The authentication protocol has been implemented on NodeMCU ESP8266 devices. A server-client protocol configuration has been used to verify the functionality of the authentication protocol. Our findings indicate that the protocol used approximately 7% of flash memory and 48% of static random-access memory (SRAM) in the sensor node during the authentication process. Hence, the proposed scheme is suitable to be used for resource-constrained IoT devices such as WSN.