Cross Layer Security MAC Aware Routing Protocol for IoT Networks

Proliferation Internet of Things (IoT) devices is increasing security vulnerabilities across the enterprise besides its intrinsic constraints such as processing power, storage capabilities, and energy resources. IoT security to resists vulnerability of attacks is a growing challenge for security professionals. Mobile IoT devices need data routing protocol to communicate the captured data considering various security vulnerabilities. Security aware routing is unceasing thought-provoking topic in IoT in the view of essential characteristics of IoT, notably multi-hop decentralized architecture, frequent topology change due to mobile IoT devices, lower link life, media access delay and multi-layer security threats. Additionally, there is need of cross layer routing that exploits dependency parameters between protocol layers as routing parameters to gain network performance through optimal routing decision. This paper introduces a design of secured cross layer protocol that utilizes routing parameters computed based on the exchanged information from Media Access Control (MAC) layer. Optimal routing decision considers various constraints like “distance, energy and Risk factor of path by Self Improved SLnO (SI-SLnO) algorithm”. We compute the Risk factor for each optimal path. Threshold based Risk factor usage helps to decide level of data privacy requirements using Elgamal cryptosystem and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Finally, the superiority of proposed secured cross layer protocol is validated in terms of various measures.