Developing low-cost testbeds for enhancing security techniques in wireless sensor network protocols

Wireless sensor network (WSN) applications have expanded considerably over the past decade or so and now, solutions exit for various innovative applications. These wireless networks adopt commercial off the shelf devices and standardized protocols, which inherently creates security challenges. These challenges are ever changing as malicious interference and intrusion techniques evolve and dynamic efficient hardware becomes increasingly accessible. This paper presents the development of multiple low-cost hardware and software platforms designed so security enhancements and modifications to WSN protocol architecture and packet structure can be designed and tested. Each testbed has been built satisfying the requirements of being available as unmodified commercial off the shelf (COTS) components and based on open source software. The testbeds provide versatility through operating on various operating systems including Windows and Linux, are reproducible and can be deployed in a way which replicates real world WSNs. Each distinct system provides remote access, real time and off line data analysis, specific control of each network node and the ability to upload data from the WSN. This paper describes in-detail the individual pieces of suitable hardware for WSN protocol and packet structure design and illustrates the system architecture required to form testbeds which can experimentally validate modifications to a WSN protocol. Additionally, a baseline is defined and encapsulates the ZigBee standard. Example results of the distinct testbeds in operation are provided along with the specific open source software being used.