Security Analysis of Distributed Compressive Sensing-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Due to limited energy and physical size of the sensor nodes, the conventional security mechanisms with high computation complexity are not feasible for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, we propose a compressive sensing-based encryption scheme for WSN, which provides both signal compression and encryption guarantees, without the additional computational cost of a separate encryption protocol. We also show that, for proposed WSN, if only a fraction of randomizer bits is stored by an eavesdropper, then he/she cannot obtain any information about the plaintext. WSNs usually are deployed in a hostile environment and left unattended, which could be compromised by the eavesdropper. Numerical results show that there is a trade-off between the number of sensor nodes required to reconstruct the original data and the approximation error in both normal and attack conditions. The approximation error of data decreases when less sensor nodes are compromised by the eavesdropper.