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STS_4e: Secure Time Synchronization in IEEE802.15.4e Networks

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Abstract

IEEE802.15.4e networks adopt time-synchronized medium access control protocols which enables highly reliable and ultra-low power industrial wireless networks. In these networks, nodes use timeslot to communicate which need a high-precision time synchronization. In hostile environments, the time synchronization protocol may be destroyed by external, compromise or pulse-delay attacks. In this paper, we present a secure time synchronization for IEEE802.15.4e networks called STS_4e which includes a secure single-hop pair-wise time synchronization and a secure cluster-wise time synchronization. The secure pair-wise time synchronization adopts message integrity authentication mechanism to defend against external attacks and threshold filter algorithm to defend against compromise and pulse-delay attacks. The secure cluster-wise time synchronization adopts packet-based key chain to improve µTESLA broadcast authentication mechanism which can well balance the delay of disclosed keys and the length of key chain. Finally, we implement the STS_4e scheme on OpenMoteSTM node running OpenWSN. The results show that the proposed scheme can successfully defend against time synchronization attacks as well as the low energy consumption.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (No. 2014AA041801-2), the National Natural Science Funds of China (61671056) and 360 Openlab Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB), Beijing, China

    Wei Yang, Jie He, Yue Qi, Ruijie Zhang & Qin Wang

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  1. Wei Yang
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  2. Jie He
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  3. Yue Qi
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  4. Ruijie Zhang
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  5. Qin Wang
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Correspondence to Jie He.

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Yang, W., He, J., Qi, Y. et al. STS_4e: Secure Time Synchronization in IEEE802.15.4e Networks. Int J Wireless Inf Networks 23, 283–296 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10776-016-0322-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10776-016-0322-3

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