Efficient Broadcast Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Broadcast authentication is an important security primitive in wireless sensor networks. Costs of Tree-based mu TESLA are rising rapidly with more senders in networks, which limit its use in large-scale networks. To removing such a limit, this paper presents a mu TPCT-based broadcast authentication protocol which mainly rests on constructions of mu TPC (mu TESLA Parameters Hash Chain) and mu TPCT (mu TPC Merkle Tree). The proposed protocol makes an improvement of Tree-based mu TESLA. It constructs mu TPC to distribute and authenticate the initial parameter Of mu TESLA. Then it constructs mu TPCT to distribute and authenticate the initial parameter of mu TPC Analysis and experiments have shown our proposed protocol has the ability of resisting DoS attacks against the distribution of mu TESLA parameters and revoking authenticating powers of compromised nodes on time. It also outperforms the Tree-based mu TESLA by reducing the cost of computation, communication, and storage needed, which makes our proposed protocol more applicable to large scale sensor networks.