Modeling of Sensor Networks - Attack Surface, Qos Surface

Abstract

The availability of low-power micro-sensors, actuators, radios and embedded processors is enabling the application of distributed wireless sensing to a wide range of applications such as environmental monitoring, condition based maintenance, military, transportation, factory instrumentation and inventory tracking. Security and Quality of Service (QoS) are two essential features of sensor networks. An integrated framework to measure security and QoS has been a long-standing challenge to the community. To determine a model for the security of a sensor network we need a measure-- at a lower abstraction level--that allows us to determine the relative security or QoS of two or more systems or protocols. Given this intermediate viewpoint, we can determine if there are certain system features that are more likely than others to be opportunities of attack. The counts of the "more likely to be attacked" system features determine a system's vulnerability. Similarly we can determine if there are certain system features that provide QoS.