Assurance-aware self-organization of sensor network

Abstract

Networking unattended wireless sensors will have a significant impact on the efficiency of military and civilian applications. However, a wireless sensor network is only as good as the information it produces. In this respect, the most important concern is information assurance. Indeed, in most application domains sensor networks will constitute a mission critical component requiring commensurate security protection. Sensor network communications must prevent disclosure and undetected modification of exchanged messages. Due to the fact that individual sensor nodes are anonymous and that communication among sensors is via wireless links, sensor networks are highly vulnerable to security attacks. The main contribution of this work is to present a self-organization protocol that can be exploited for the purpose of designing assurance-aware protocols.