The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

The security trade-offs in resource constrained nodes for IoT application

The security trade-offs in resource constrained nodes for IoT application
The security trade-offs in resource constrained nodes for IoT application
The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) has received much attention over the last five years. It is predicted that the IoT will influence every aspect of our lifestyles in the near future. Wireless Sensor Networks are one of the key enablers of the operation of IoTs, allowing data to be collected from the surrounding environment. However, due to limited resources, nature of deployment and unattended operation, a WSN is vulnerable to various types of attack. Security is paramount for reliable and safe communication between IoT embedded devices, but it does, however, come at a cost to resources. Nodes are usually equipped with small batteries, which makes energy conservation crucial to IoT devices. Nevertheless, security cost in terms of energy consumption has not been studied sufficiently. Previous research has used a security specification of 802.15.4 for IoT applications, but the energy cost of each security level and the impact on quality of services (QoS) parameters remain unknown. This research focuses on the cost of security at the IoT media access control (MAC) layer. It begins by studying the energy consumption of IEEE 802.15.4 security levels, which is followed by an evaluation for the impact of security on data latency and throughput, and then presents the impact of transmission power on security overhead, and finally shows the effects of security on memory footprint. The results show that security overhead in terms of energy consumption with a payload of 24 bytes fluctuates between 31.5% at minimum level over non-secure packets and 60.4% at the top security level of 802.15.4 security specification. Also, it shows that security cost has less impact at longer packet lengths, and more with smaller packet size. In addition, the results depicts a significant impact on data latency and throughput. Overall, maximum authentication length decreases throughput by almost 53%, and encryption and authentication together by almost 62%.
52-59
Alharby, Sultan
499b9e0a-ab81-4e80-8aff-1f52ae6d2afd
Harris, Nicholas
237cfdbd-86e4-4025-869c-c85136f14dfd
Weddell, Alex
3d8c4d63-19b1-4072-a779-84d487fd6f03
Reeve, Jeff
7d68ed10-0b4b-4bc4-97a8-39431f7e3e81
Alharby, Sultan
499b9e0a-ab81-4e80-8aff-1f52ae6d2afd
Harris, Nicholas
237cfdbd-86e4-4025-869c-c85136f14dfd
Weddell, Alex
3d8c4d63-19b1-4072-a779-84d487fd6f03
Reeve, Jeff
7d68ed10-0b4b-4bc4-97a8-39431f7e3e81

Alharby, Sultan, Harris, Nicholas, Weddell, Alex and Reeve, Jeff (2018) The security trade-offs in resource constrained nodes for IoT application. International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering, 12 (1), 52-59. (doi:10.1999/1307-6892/10008451).

Record type: Article

Abstract

The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) has received much attention over the last five years. It is predicted that the IoT will influence every aspect of our lifestyles in the near future. Wireless Sensor Networks are one of the key enablers of the operation of IoTs, allowing data to be collected from the surrounding environment. However, due to limited resources, nature of deployment and unattended operation, a WSN is vulnerable to various types of attack. Security is paramount for reliable and safe communication between IoT embedded devices, but it does, however, come at a cost to resources. Nodes are usually equipped with small batteries, which makes energy conservation crucial to IoT devices. Nevertheless, security cost in terms of energy consumption has not been studied sufficiently. Previous research has used a security specification of 802.15.4 for IoT applications, but the energy cost of each security level and the impact on quality of services (QoS) parameters remain unknown. This research focuses on the cost of security at the IoT media access control (MAC) layer. It begins by studying the energy consumption of IEEE 802.15.4 security levels, which is followed by an evaluation for the impact of security on data latency and throughput, and then presents the impact of transmission power on security overhead, and finally shows the effects of security on memory footprint. The results show that security overhead in terms of energy consumption with a payload of 24 bytes fluctuates between 31.5% at minimum level over non-secure packets and 60.4% at the top security level of 802.15.4 security specification. Also, it shows that security cost has less impact at longer packet lengths, and more with smaller packet size. In addition, the results depicts a significant impact on data latency and throughput. Overall, maximum authentication length decreases throughput by almost 53%, and encryption and authentication together by almost 62%.

Text
pdf - Version of Record
Download (107kB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 18 January 2018
Published date: 18 January 2018

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 417190
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/417190
PURE UUID: c7214d86-4986-41f6-a85d-28eb92f6214c
ORCID for Nicholas Harris: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4122-2219
ORCID for Alex Weddell: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6763-5460

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 24 Jan 2018 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 03:49

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Sultan Alharby
Author: Nicholas Harris ORCID iD
Author: Alex Weddell ORCID iD
Author: Jeff Reeve

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×