A User Authentication Scheme With Privacy Protection for Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, user authentication is a wireless mutual authentication process between a user and sensor nodes by which people could acquire the environmental information around them. It is really necessary because in the upcoming ubiquitous age, people will want to utilize this information for enhancing their daily activities. Since a sensor node has very limited resources, the authors want to provide the information only to legitimate users in order to conserve the small power consumption. For this purpose, sensor node must verify the user in an efficient and secure manner. In addition, they must protect the privacy of the user because all messages are broadcasted on the air which means that an attacker can easily infringe the privacy of the user by eavesdropping the broadcasted messages.