Energy-driven methodology for node self-destruction in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks technology is a rapidly growing domain, getting more and more credit in the area of civilian and military applications. In the same time with technological advancement, new and dangerous information security threats have emerged. In this paper we considered that a node self-destruction procedure must be performed as a final stage in the sensor node lifecycle in order to assure the confidentiality regarding information like: network topology, type of measurement data gathered by sensors, encryption/authentication algorithms and key-exchange mechanisms, etc. that can be unveiled otherwise through reverse engineering methods. Our methodology relies on an efficient power monitoring scheme, based on combined in-network and predictive data, which discover the low battery nodes and initiate a self-destruction procedure for that nodes.