SFIOT: Software-Defined Function for the IoT

Abstract

Wireless reprogramming is a significant yet challenging issue in the Internet of Things (IoT). Existing methods designed for wireless sensor networks (WSN) are inadequate for IoT scenarios and have exposed severe security vulnerabilities. To address this problem, we propose Software-Defined Function (SDF), a secure and wireless reprogramming architecture for IoT named SFIOT. The key is to implement a secure communication interface between the control layer and the infrastructure layer. To this end, a set of security protocols which ensure authentication and confidentiality are designed, and their security is proved theoretically and formally verified. In addition, the constrained capabilities of IoT devices are taken into consideration in our design. We have tested the performance of SDF through a set of experiments and presented a use case on a photovoltaic energy system. The evaluation results show that the proposed protocols can be implemented in real-world IoT applications.