Towards an Approach for Improved Security in Wireless Networks

Wireless sensor networks are now widely used in military surveillance, industrial applications and civilian uses such as pollution control, forest fire detection, farming etc. Their emergence has posed many unique challenges to researchers. The security of such networks is of utmost importance and as such has been extensively researched. These networks are vulnerable to external threats that may try to gain unauthorized access with malicious intent. In this paper we look at a few security algorithms used on wireless sensor networks. These include SPINS, TinySec, LEAP (Localized Encryption and Authentication Protocol) and PADS (Practical Algorithm for Data Security). Areas that are covered include: architectures and routing protocols, security issues, algorithms, and performance issues for wireless sensor network design