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Cheng-Yeh Chen 1 and Alan Dahgwo Yein 2 and Te-Cheng Hsu 2 and John Y. Chiang 1,3 and Wen-Shyong Hsieh 1,2
Academic Editor:Muhammad Khurram Khan
1, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan
2, Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Shu-Te University, Kaohsiung 82445, Taiwan
3, Department of Healthcare Administration and Medical Informatics, Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan
Received 31 July 2014; Revised 18 October 2014; Accepted 18 October 2014; 1 July 2015
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of base stations and a large number of resource-constrained and energy-limited sensor nodes that are typically deployed in various environments. Since the base stations and sensor nodes communicate with each other via wireless channels [1], the WSN system is threatened by malicious security attacks.
In WSNs, after a prolonged period of operation, the power of some of the sensor nodes gets exhausted. This occurs due to uneven distribution of radio transmission load or damage caused by unpredictable events. The base station must dynamically add new nodes to the WSN to ensure the coverage and connectivity of sensor nodes. Following the addition of a node, the new node is authenticated by the neighboring nodes, and it establishes shared session keys with them for secure communication.
In order to attack or access communication information, malicious nodes may modify received messages, eavesdrop on transmission messages, insert false messages, or provide misleading information to legitimate sensor nodes. Therefore, access control security is a major concern in WSNs.
Zhou et al. [2] proposed an access control protocol to improve the performance of traditional public-key-based encryption protocols. This protocol was based on the elliptic curve. Each sensor node could sustain for a tolerable time interval before it was compromised, rendering the scheme unsuitable for certain practical applications. Huang [3] proposed an efficient access control protocol based on the elliptic curve and hash chains. This scheme could easily add new nodes and resist various attacks. Kim and Lee [4] proposed an enhanced access control protocol based on the scheme proposed by Huang. Their research indicated that...