Lightweight and practical node clustering authentication protocol for hierarchical wireless sensor networks

There are many concerns about the sensitivity and the privacy of data in hierarchical wireless sensor networks (HWSNs) because the low-cost nodes are neither tamper-proof nor capable of performing public key cryptography efficiently. In existing studies, many researchers only focus on the existence of single node in the network, while the arrangement that multiple nodes attached to one cluster is out of consideration. In this paper, we propose a lightweight and practical node clustering authentication protocol for HWSNs. As we assume that one cluster to be authenticated is attached with a group of nodes. The cluster head (CH) node takes full control of the entire authentication process in its cluster. In addition, the protocol is proved to offer enough security assurances and have resistance to various attacks. The regular operation of the network will not be affected or damaged by the incidents occurred during the authentication process.