A Secure and Lightweight Protocol for Message Authentication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Securing messages and protecting them from tampering during transmission in wireless sensor networks is a challenging task. Using message authentication schemes provides security and authentication, but with a high computational and communication cost. Sensors are highly constrained in terms of computational capabilities and power consumption. Therefore, computation is divided into two phases: online (at the sensor) and offline (at a more powerful central node). Moreover, public keys are generated based on the identities to reduce communication overhead. In this article, we propose a message authentication scheme based on identity that uses online/offline signature. We prove that the scheme provides and protects the integrity of messages during the transmission of data over an insecure network. Our scheme is existential unforgeable against chosen message attack.