Rabbit-MAC: Lightweight Authenticated Encryption in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new lightweight authenticated encryption mechanism based on Rabbit stream cipher referred to as Rabbit-MAC, for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that fulfils both requirements of security as well as energy efficiency. Our proposed scheme provides data authentication, confidentiality and integrity in WSNs. We construct a Rabbit based MAC function, which can be used for data authentication and data integrity. Our proposed security protocol is an idea for resource constrained WSNs, and can be widely used in the applications of secure communication where the communication nodes have limited processing and storage capabilities while requiring sufficient levels of security. The features of Rabbit-MAC scheme conclude that this particular scheme might be more efficient than the existing schemes in terms of security and resource consumption.