On securing IEEE 802.15.4 networks through a standard compliant framework

Abstract

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is widely recognized as one of the most successful enabling technologies for short range low rate wireless communications. Although it provides all the details of both MAC and PHY layers of the protocol stack, the standard also explains specific methodologies to protect MAC packets through symmetric-key cryptography techniques under several security options. However, the orchestration of available security profiles and the management of key negotiation schemes is delegated to upper layers. In support of this feature, this work describes a standard compliant security framework aimed at proposing: (i) different kind of security architectures, (ii) an efficient mechanism for initializing a secure IEEE 802.15.4 domain, and (iii) a lightweight mechanism to negotiate link keys among devices. Experimental tests have been conducted to demonstrate the behavior of the proposed solution in real environments. Obtained results clearly show that the enabling of security features in constrained nodes requires additional computational efforts, which involve a not negligible growth of communication latencies. Such findings have to be carefully considered when designing and developing enhanced applications in future and secured Internet of Things (IoT) systems.