Abstract:
Seamless communication with WSN devices has facilitated the development of various Internet
of Thing (IoT) applications. The information communication technologies being developed for
this purpose are currently centered around an adaptation layer, specifically IPv6 over Low
Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN), and are constrained by the Constrained
Application Protocol (CoAP). A significant challenge in CoAP communications with internetintegrated
wireless sensor networks is ensuring end-to-end security, particularly due to the high
computational costs associated with elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) on resource-limited
wireless sensing devices. Additional concerns include the incompatibility of end-to-end security
with CoAP proxies and the limitations of wireless sensor nodes. The mechanism proposed in
this research tackles these challenges effectively. It utilizes a DTLS-based security protocol that
facilitates a transparent DTLS handshake with mutual authentication, aimed at reducing the
computational load on constrained sensor nodes while offloading intensive ECC computations
to more powerful devices. The implementation employs pre-shared key authentication for
sensor nodes, along with a security protocol that guarantees both mutual authentication and
confidentiality within the wireless sensor network (WSN) environment during end-to-end
communications. The outcomes of this research have positively impacted both power
consumption and memory usage in WSN devices. The proposed approach can be seamlessly
integrated into applications running on internet clients (CoAP clients), and sensors node (CoAP
servers). Overall, this system enhances end-to-end security for IoT applications while
conserving resources in WSN nodes.
Keywords: DTLS, CoAP, ECC, IoT, 6LoWPAN, and WSN.