Energy cost of security in an energy-harvested IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) powered by energy harvesting from the environment represent a sustainable direction towards the future Internet of Things. In this paper, we evaluate the effect security features have on power consumption of such WSNs and revisit the previous conclusions regarding the energetic cost of security. We approach the problem of estimating the cost of security from a highly practical standpoint, and show that many real world, security agnostic factors affect the energy consumption of a device, but are often neglected by security researchers. Consequently, overpriced conclusions are often made that may affect decisions if security features should be by default enabled in real deployments. Our experimental results show that for practical applications and implementations security features introduce a negligible degradation that is often acceptable even for the most energy stringent systems, such as those based on energy harvesting.