Provenance Transmission through a Two-Dimensional Covert Timing Channel in WSNs

Provenances, which record the history of data acquisition and transmission, are hard to be transmitted in resource-tightened wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to their drastic size expansion with the increase in packet transmission hops. To ease the burden caused by the provenance transmission, we first designed a two-dimensional covert timing channel (2dCTC) and then applied it to provenances transmission in WSNs. Based on Cantor Expansion, 2dCTC uses pseudo packet IDs permutation and packet sizes variation together to form a two-dimensional communication medium. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results show that 2dCTC not only has a much higher channel capacity than those of most of the known CTCs, but also conserves more energy for provenance transmission in WSNs. Furthermore, 2dCTC provides a new way to increase CTCs channel capacity and stealthiness through multi-dimensional approaches.