Modeling a Secure Sensor Network Using an Extended Elementary Object System

A sensor network consists of a large number of sensor nodes, which are spread over a geographical area. Sensor networks have found their way into many applications, from military domains to traffic or environmental monitoring, and as sensor networks reach toward wide spread deployment, security becomes a major concern. In this regard, one needs to be sure about the confidentiality, authenticity and tamper-proof of data. The research thus far has focused on how to deploy sensor networks so that they can work efficiently; however, the focus of this paper is on sensor networks’ security issues. In this paper, the authors propose a formal model to design and analyze the secure sensor network system. The model is based on an augmented Petri net formalism called Extended Elementary Object System. This proposed secure sensor network model has a multi-layered structure consisting of sink node layer, sensor node layer and security mechanism layer. At the security mechanism layer, a synchronous firing mechanism is utilized as a security measure to detect malicious node attacks to sensor data and information flow. In addition, the model applies SNEP protocol for authentication and confidentiality of sensor data.