Title: Authentication and secret search mechanisms for RFID-aware wireless sensor networks

Authors: Shih-I Huang, Shiuhpyng Shieh

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. ' Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

Abstract: This paper investigates authentication and secure data retrieval issues in Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID)-aware wireless sensor networks. We propose a network architecture (ARIES) consisting of RFIDs and wireless sensor nodes, a mutual authentication protocol (AMULET), and a Secret Search Protocol (SSP). ARIES utilises RFID-aware sensor nodes to alleviate distance limitation problem in RFID systems. AMULET performs mutual authentication and reduces the cost of re-authentication. SSP solves the privacy problem by offering a search mechanism over encrypted data. SSP does not need to decrypt encrypted data files while searching for specific data and the performance is greatly improved.

Keywords: RFID; radio frequency identification; wireless sensor networks; WSNs; mutual authentication; privacy; secret search; secure data retrieval; security; wireless networks; encrypted data.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSN.2010.030719

International Journal of Security and Networks, 2010 Vol.5 No.1, pp.15 - 25

Published online: 31 Dec 2009 *

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