Efficient Encryption Techniques for Data Transmission Through the Internet of Things Devices

Communication In The Internet Of Things Environment (Introduction)

Communication is an important part of our life. It is necessary for the growth and development of an individual as well as for the growth and development of the whole society. Researchers are working hard to design an efficient methodology for secure communication. Three things are very important in order to formulate an efficient communication methodology: (1) language knowledge and understanding of the sender, (2) language knowledge and understanding of the receiver, (3) strong and unbreakable secure communication medium.

The need of the present time is not only the communication between machines and humans but also one need strong security for the communication between machines and machines (i.e. M2M communication). In the scenario of the Internet of Things, almost all objects of the real world are communicating. These communications are done through sensors without or hardly any human intervention. A large number of sensors are deployed everywhere for sensing and actuation purposes. The increasing number of sensors and end devices are prone to attack easily and hence author need a next level of the secure algorithm but at the same time a lightweight one.

Machine to Machine Communication (M2M), Cyber-Physical System (CPS), Vehicular Area Network (VANET), Body Area Network (BANET) and likewise terminologies are a subset of the Internet of Things (IoT) (Atzori, Iera, & Morabito, 2010). Figure 1, the 3-TIER architecture of Body Area Network (Source: Internet), is illustrating an architecture that is meant for a typical body area network used by doctors. One can see a three-tier communication here. Many sensor devices are placed on different part of the body to get different readings according to their need.

Figure 1.

In all these types of networks the communication has to be done in three ways: (1) communication between end devices and local sensors, (2) communication between local sensors and cluster head sensor, (3) communication between cluster head sensor and processing unit. The number of end devices and sensors are very large and hence designer needs a strong mechanism to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and authentication of participating devices. Because every device is communicating, they should be smart enough to send and receive the signals, to store some data, and to actuate. Highly complex algorithms are meant only for the devices working on UPS such as the desktop PC. Programmers need the algorithms having less complexity yet a similar level of security for mobile devices, such as laptop PC or PDA or cellular communication devices (Khan, Khan, Zaheer, & Khan, 2012). Similarly, for RFID Tags or Internet of Things devices, researcher needs lightweight secure algorithms or ultra-lightweight secure algorithms. The devices used in the Internet of Things framework are very less powered (equipped with a tinny battery) and hence, one cannot impose long algorithms over them. In the Internet of Things, the algorithms with lesser gate requirements are considered good for use. Achieving a similar level of security with less gate equivalent (GE) is the main challenge for the security algorithms of Internet of Things devices. The Gate Equivalent (GE) value is calculated by dividing the complete area of the circuit by the area of a basic NAND Gate (Maimut & Ouafi, 2012).

Traditional Computing And Internet Of Things (Key Challenges)

Change is the law of nature. No one can deny the new requirements of the coming generation. This is the time to shift from traditional computing environment to a new Internet of Things environment where each and every seen object of the earth is going to be connected via the internet. As researchers are growing, many old boundaries need to be rescaled.