Analyzing Homomorphic Encryption Schemes in Securing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)

Data aggregation in WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) is substantial in increasing the network lifetime by eliminating the information redundancy. However, in current practice, aggregation data is transmitted in clear hence the whole process is prone to various attacks. In the past, this unwanted pitfall was mostly due lack of efficient encryption technology suited for limited WSN nodes; however, relatively lightweight HES (Homomorphic Encryption Schemes) allowing operations on the encrypted data is considered as a promising solution in securing such constrained devices. In this study, we carry out a comprehensive performance analysis of the most popular HES, particularly targeting limited WSN nodes. To our measurements: the implemented HES primitives match the performance and low power requirements; are feasible to be deployed inside the current widely deployed sensor nodes, and are scalable to thousands of sensor nodes without straining the lifetime of the whole network.