Secure Pull Request Development for TinyIPFIX in Wireless Sensor Network

The application range of wireless sensor networks rises together with the corresponding challenges (e.g. collection frequency, transmission limits). Depending on the application scenario the design of the network can vary concerning size, settings, and used hardware.

Sometimes it is useful to update values in the system during run time. Assuming a fire scenario it is essential to update the existing collection intervals perhaps from once an hour to every minute. The currently established network at our department works with an efficient data transmission protocol called TinyIPFIX but a bidirectional communication was not yet implemented. The only bidirectional communication is possible with aggregator nodes within the system in order to update the aggregation functionality. As described in the fire example this connection won’t help. Thus we need a good bidirectional communication solution, which allows basic functional updates of system components within a running system.

YOUR task will be the evaluation of existing bidirectional communication solutions in wireless sensor networks following by an analysis of requirements for constraint hardware working under TinyOS 2.x. The implemented bidirectional communication solution support the following functionalities in a secure manner based on the established TinyIPFIX protocol:

• Update of individual sensor nodes (e.g., intervals)
• Update of all network components at the same time (e.g. multicast)
• Pull current sensor reading
• Including pull support for CoMaDa and WebMaDa
• Transmit pull request and results in secure manner
  

Afterwards the implementation is evaluated (e.g., resource consumption, performance) and integrated into the existing system.