Authentic delay bounded event detection in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

When using wireless sensor networks for real-time event alarming, it is critical to ensure event notification in a timely manner. Additionally, it is extremely important to ensure the alarms generated by the sensors propagate securely through the network to the sink. Another important factor to consider is energy, as it is a limited resource in wireless sensor networks. Accordingly, maximizing network lifetime is always an optimization goal. To address the aforementioned concerns, in this paper we present the Authentic Delay Bounded Event Detection System (ADBEDS). ADBEDS works in rounds, and in each round an event detection tree is responsible for simultaneously detecting events, routing packets to a gateway node, and detecting injection of false packets. The ADBEDS can support k-watching composite events to allow event detection in a redundant manner. Additionally, the corresponding event alarm can be delivered within a user-specified bounded delay. The use of energy-based keying allows smaller, more efficient keys as input to security mechanisms, allowing further reduction in energy consumption of the ADBEDS. We evaluate the energy efficiency and reliability of ADBEDS using theoretical analysis and simulation.