Enabling secure data transmission for wireless sensor networks based IoT applications

The high volume of sensed and transferred data among nodes on wireless sensor networks makes it necessary to keep the data safe. This study offers an improved security mechanism, taking the application, security level, and bit error rate into account for wireless sensor networks. We used reserved bits of frame control field in the Zigbee MAC header to give the user the ability to choose between insecure or secure modes. Also, under particular circumstances (BER) using the cross-layered interaction mechanism, the network can switch to the other available algorithms due to special criteria. We selected RECTANGLE, Fantomas, and Camellia algorithms and compared their performance against AES to provide an alternative security solution for different scenarios according to various security demands. The performance evaluations were measured and compared for the memory usage, throughput, battery consumption, and end-to-end delay metrics. Our results suggest using SPN-based block ciphers than the Feistel-based structure.