Multi-channel secure communication framework for wireless IoT (MCSC-WoT): enhancing security in Internet of Things

2025-09-11

AI Summary

To address critical security vulnerabilities—including man-in-the-middle, replay, and jamming attacks—as well as high synchronization overhead, excessive energy consumption, and significant latency in resource-constrained IoT/WoT multi-channel communication, this paper proposes a lightweight, multi-channel secure communication framework integrating dynamic frequency hopping with efficient cryptography. The framework co-designs adaptive channel-hopping strategies with AES-128, elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC), and jamming-resilient modulation to achieve low-overhead end-to-end security. Experimental evaluation demonstrates substantial improvements over conventional single-channel encryption and static frequency-hopping schemes: packet delivery ratio increases by 23.6%, average end-to-end latency decreases by 31.4%, energy consumption drops by 27.8%, and bit error rate improves by one order of magnitude across diverse jamming scenarios. These results validate the framework’s effectiveness in balancing security, efficiency, and robustness for constrained IoT/WoT deployments.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship

Abstract

In modern smart systems, the convergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless of Things (WoT) have been revolutionized by offering a broad level of wireless connectivity and communication among various devices. Hitherto, this greater interconnectivity poses important security problems, including the question of how to securely interconnect different networks, preserve secure communication channels, and maintain data integrity. However, the traditional cryptographic method and frequency hopping technique, although they provide some protection, are not sufficient to defend against Man-In-The-Middle, jamming, and replay attacks. In addition, synchronization issues in multi-channel communication systems result in increased latency and energy consumption, which make them unsuitable for resource-constrained IoT and WoT devices. This work presents the Multi-Channel Secure Communication (MCSC) framework, which integrates advanced cryptographic protocols with dynamic channel-hopping strategies to enhance security with reduced synchronization overhead. The MCSC framework maximizes the critical performance metrics, such as packet delivery ratio, latency, throughput, and energy efficiency, and fulfills the specific requirements of the IoT and WoT networks. A comprehensive comparison of MCSC with well-established methods, including Frequency Hop Spread Spectrum, single channel Advanced Encryption Standard, and various Elliptic Curve Cryptography-based schemes, indicates that MCSC has lower error rates and is more resilient to a wider range of cyber attacks. The efficiency of the proposed solution to secure IoT and WoT networks without compromising the operational performance is validated under various interference conditions.

Problem

• Enhancing security in wireless IoT communication networks
• Addressing synchronization issues in multi-channel IoT systems
• Defending against cyber attacks like MITM and jamming

Innovation

• Integrates cryptographic protocols with dynamic channel-hopping
• Reduces synchronization overhead in multi-channel communication
• Enhances security without compromising operational performance