Power Adaptive Data Encryption for Energy-Efficient and Secure Communication in Solar-Powered Wireless Sensor Networks

Basic security of data transmission in battery-powered wireless sensor networks (wsns) is typically achieved by symmetric-key encryption,which uses little energy; but solar-powered wsns sometimes have sufficient energy to achieve a higher level of security through public-key encryption. however,if energy input and usage are not balanced,nodes may black out. by switching between symmetric-key and public-key encryption,based on an energy threshold,the level of security can be traded off against the urgency of energy-saving. this policy can also reduce the amount of energy used by some nodes in a wsn,since data encrypted using a public-key is simply relayed by intermediate nodes,whereas data encrypted using a symmetric-key must be decrypted and reencrypted in every node on its path. through a simulation,we compared the use of either symmetric-key or public-key encryption alone with our scheme,which was shown to be more secure,to use energy more effectively,and to reduce the occurrence of node blackouts. © 2016 jong min kim et al.