A user authentication protocol combined with trust model and ECC for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

As sensor nodes are usually installed in harsh environments and nobody attends them, the character means it's easy for the networks to be subjected to all kinds of attacks. Moreover, the networks have limited computer power, communication power and energies. Therefore, in the environment, a well-organized and lightweight user authentication is a vital issue when a user possesses right to use the data from sensor nodes. In this article, a new user authentication protocol using trust model and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for WSNs is submitted. The result of the trust model analysis indicates that the model can improve the model's ability of withstanding attacks from the malicious nodes. The results of safety analysis and performance analysis for our proposed user authentication protocol demonstrate that this protocol can be flexible to all sorts of common known attacks and performs similarly or better compared with some active user authentication protocols.