The increasing number of IoT devices used in today’s society has led to a demand for better security in order to prevent attackers from gaining access to private information. The IoT brings a wide application scope and because of that there are a lot of ways to set up a secure network and manage keys in these kinds of networks. This paper presents a comparison between the security model in Zigbee and the new recommended practice for Key Management Protocols defined by the IEEE 802.15.9 standard. We investigate key establishment and transportation together with the vulnerabilities that this might bring regarding potential attacks like DoS and MitM. Since these protocols are built on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, experimental tests have been made where we analyze the throughput, RTT and packet loss over varied distances and we try to determine the maximum transmission range for devices using IEEE 802.15.4 modules. The IEEE 802.15.9 standard works with different KMPs and depending on the KMP being used we can see both similarities and differences regarding key management and possible attacks when comparing it to ZigBee. Furthermore, we found that attacks on a ZigBee device is more likely to compromise the whole network while similar attacks would only affect the specific peers in an IEEE 802.15.9 communication. Based on the experiments we find that open areas, distance and interference have a negative effect on the throughput, RTT and packet loss of the communication.

Sintetizadores de Freqüências são circuitos que geram sinais em freqüências pré-determinadas, sendo estes sinais usados tanto na recepção como na transmissão de Rádio Freqüência. Os circuitos Sintetizadores possuem diversos blocos, dentre os quais podemos citar, osciladores controlados por tensão (VCO Voltage-Controlled Oscillator), divisores programáveis (Prescaler), comparadores de fase (DFF Detectores de Fase e Freqüência), bombas de carga (CP Charge Pump) e Filtros Passa Baixas (LPF Low Pass Filters). Em 2003 foi projetado por Angel M.G. Argüello [Ar04] um circuito Sintetizador de Freqüências com arquitetura tipo Integer-N. Este circuito, projetado para ter banda centrada em torno de 2,4 GHz e 16 canais de 4,78 MHz, foi implementado na tecnologia CMOS 0,35 µm da AMS (Austrian Micro Systems), que possui quatro níveis de metais e dois níveis de polisilício. Após testes do circuito as seguintes conclusões sobre seu funcionamento foram derivadas: o circuito funcionou qualitativamente como projetado, sintetizando 16 tons de freqüência; o ruído de fase medido ficou acima do valor desejado; a potência consumida esteve dentro dos valores previstos, porém elevada. No decorrer de 2004 foram feitas alterações no layout do circuito de Argüello com o objetivo de melhorar o ruído de fase. Estas alterações serviram como estudo preliminar para este trabalho. Dando continuidade ao desenvolvimento de Sintetizadores, em 2005 foram estudadas novas estruturas e layouts mais eficientes no tocante a ruído de fase, dando-se especial atenção às alimentações dos circuitos digitais e analógicos e ao isolamento entre os mesmos. Um novo circuito Sintetizador foi desenvolvido para aplicações em sistemas ZigBee, que operam na banda de freqüência entre 2,400 GHz a 2,485 GHz, com 16 canais de largura igual 2 à 5 MHz. Resultados de simulação sobre o circuito projetado apontaram o funcionamento adequado, com consumo de potência inferior a 32 mW para tensão de alimentação de 3,3 V. / Frequency Synthesizers are circuits that generate pre-determined frequencies, used in both radio frequency reception and transmission. The Synthesizer circuits are composed by several blocks, such as Voltage-Controlled Oscillator (VCO), Prescaler, PFD (Phase/Frequency Detector), Charge Pump (CP), and Low Pass Filters (LPF). In 2003, an Integer-N architecture Frequency Synthesizer circuit was developed by Angel M.G. Argüello [Ar04]. This circuit, designed to have a band centered around 2.4 GHz and 16 channels with a 4.78 MHz, were implemented with the 0.35 µm CMOS technology from AMS (Austrian Micro Systems), using four metal levels and two polisilicon levels. After the circuit tests, the following conclusions about its operation were derived: the designed circuit operated as expected, generating 16 tons of frequency; the phase noise stayed above of the desired value; the power consumption were within the expected values although high. During the year of 2004, several modifications in the Argüello circuit layout have been done in order to improve the phase noise. These modifications were a preliminary study to this work. Advancing in the development of Synthesizers, in 2005 new structures and more efficient layouts, in terms of noise, were studied, with special attention given to the digital and analog power supplies and their isolation. A new Synthesizer was developed for applications with the ZigBee, which operates with frequencies from 2.400 GHz to 2.485 GHz and 16 channels of 5 MHz. The simulation results pointed out the correct operation of the circuit, with power consumption lower than 32 mW for power supply of 3.3 V.

Com o aumento das aplicações e dispositivos para Internet das Coisas, muitos esforços para reduzir potência dissipada nos transceptores foram investidos. A maioria deles, entretanto, focam individualmente no rádio, nos conversores analógicos para digital e viceversa, e na arquitetura de banda base digital. Como consequência, há pouca margem para melhorias na potência dissipada nestes blocos isolados que compense o enorme esforço. Portanto, este trabalho propõe uma arquitetura adaptativa a nível de sistema focando em reduzir o consumo no conversor analógico para digital e no receptor digital. Ele utiliza um algoritmo robusto para o receptor banda base digital, um conversor analógico para digital topologia Sigma-Delta e um bloco de controle realimentado conforme a relação sinal ruído medida do pacote recebido. O sistema foi projetado para o protocolo IEEE 802.15.4. Para validação do sistema e estimar a potência consumida foi feito um modelo de sistema utilizando a ferramenta Matlab, uma descrição do hardware em linguagem Verilog e uma síntese lógica utilizando o processo da X-FAB XC018. As simulações mostram uma redução na potência consumida pelo sistema de até 13% e ainda atingindo os requisitos do protocolo. Os resultados deste trabalho foram publicados na conferência internacional em tecnologia de instrumentação e medidas de 2014 realizada na cidade de Montevidéu no Uruguai. / With the increase of Internet of Things applications and devices, many efforts to reduce power consumption in transceiver has been invested. Most of them targeted in RF frontend, converters, or in the digital baseband architecture individually. As result, there are few margins nowadays for power improvement in these blocks singly that compensates the huge hard work required. The next optimization step leads to a system level analysis seeking design space and new possibilities expansion. It is in this field that adaptive systems approaches are conquering ground recently. The solutions combines Radio Frequency (RF) and process variation techniques, Low Pass Filters (LPF) and Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs) adjustment for better performance, digital baseband bit width adaptive according to income packet SNR, configurable ADC resolution and topology, and others. In this scenario the current work proposes an adaptive system level architecture targeting ADC and digital receiver power reduction. It uses a robust algorithm for digital baseband receiver, a Sigma-Delta ADC, and suggests a feedback control block based on packet SNR measure. The system was designed for the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and required system modeling using Matlab tool, hardware description in Verilog language, and logic synthesis using X-FAB XC018 process for validation and power consumption estimation. Simulations show up to 15% of system power reduction and still meeting the standard requirements. The work results were published in the International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference of 2014 occurred in Montevideo - Uruguay.

Tese de mestrado. Redes e Serviços de Comunicação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto, Instituto Superior de Engenharia. 2007

The ongoing Smart Grid (SG) initiative proposes several modifications to the existing power grid in order to better manage power demands, reduce CO2 emissions and ensure reliability through several new applications. One part of the SG initiative that is currently being implemented is the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) which provides two-way communication between the utility company and the consumers' smart meters (SMs). The AMI can be built by using a wireless mesh network which enables multi-hop communication of SMs. The AMI network enables collection of fine-grained power consumption data at frequent intervals. Such a fine-grained level poses several privacy concerns for the consumers. Eavesdroppers can capture data packets and analyze them by means of load monitoring techniques to make inferences about household activities. To prevent this, in this dissertation, we proposed several privacy-preserving protocols for the IEEE 802.11s-based AMI network, which are based on data obfuscation, fully homomorphic encryption and secure multiparty computation. Simulation results have shown that the performance of the protocols degrades as the network grows. To overcome this problem, we presented a scalable simulation framework for the evaluation of IEEE 802.11s-based AMI applications. We proposed several modifications and parameter adjustments for the network protocols being used. In addition, we integrated the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) into the protocol stack and proposed five novel retransmission timeout calculation functions for the CoAP in order to increase its reliability. Upon work showing that there are inconsistencies between the simulator and a testbed, we built an IEEE 802.11s- and ZigBee-based AMI testbed and measured the performance of the proposed protocols under various conditions. The testbed is accessible to the educator and researchers for the experimentation. Finally, we addressed the problem of updating SMs remotely to keep the AMI network up-to-date. To this end, we developed two secure and reliable multicast-over-broadcast protocols by making use of ciphertext-policy attribute based signcryption and random linear network coding.

This thesis consists of two topics. We proposed a low power half-run RC5 cipher for portable biomedical devices in the first part of this thesis. The second topic is to realize a frequency-shift readout system for FPW-based biosensors. In the first topic, a half-round low-power RC5 encryption structure is proposed. To reduce hardware cost as well as power consumption, the proposed RC5 cipher adopts a resource-sharing approach, where only one adder/subtractor, one bi-directional barrel shifter, and one XOR with 32-bit bus width are used to carry out the entire design. Two data paths are switched through the combination of four multiplexers in the encryption/decryption procedure. For the sake of power reduction, the clock in the key expansion can be turned off when all subkeys are generated. In the second topic, an IgE antigen concentration measurement system using a frequency-shift readout method for a two-port FPW (flexural plate-wave) allergy biosensor is presented. The proposed frequency-shift readout method adopts a peak detecting scheme to detect the resonant frequency. A linear frequency generator, a pair of peak detectors, two registers, and an subtractor are only needed in our system. According to the characteristics of the FPW allergy biosensor, the frequency sweep range is limited in a range of 2 MHz to 4 MHz. The precision of the measured frequency is proved to the 4.2 kHz/mV, which is for better than that of existing designs.

In recent years, the requirement of application such as wireless sensor networks and short-range wireless controllers caused the growing of ZigBee technology. ZigBee is a communication technology developed specifically for short-range, low rate, low-cost wireless transmission.There are some characteristic such as short-range, low rate, low cost, and low power. The ZigBee Aliance group developed the specifications of software, and IEEE 802.15.4 group developed the specifications of hardware. IEEE 802.15.4a impulse radio UWB physical layer is one of the ZigBee physical layers. In our study, we designed a baseband signal processing algorithm meeting the specifications of IEEE 802.15.4a. The data processing flow in transmitter followed the specifications. In receiver, we designed baseband algorithms based-on the non-coherent energy detection scheme. Our algorithm including packet detection, synchronization and demodulation, and considering the implementation of algorithm, reducing the complexity of hardware as possible and improving the efficiency. Finally, the system performance is 3.9dB better than the receiver sensitivity.

Low power wireless communications is the most demanding request among all wireless users. A battery life that can survive for years without being replaced, makes it realistic to implement many applications where the battery is unreachable (e.g. concrete walls) or expensive to change (e.g underground applications). IEEE 802.15.4/ZIGBEE standard is published to cover low power low cost applications, where the battery life can last for years, because of the 1% duty cycle of operation. A fully integrated 2.4GHz IEEE802.15.4 Compliant transceiver suitable for low power, low cost ZIGBEE applications is implemented. Direct conversion architecture is used in both Receiver and Transmitter, to achieve the minimum possible power and area. The chip is fabricated in a standard 0.18um CMOS technology. In the transmit mode, the transmitter chain (Modulator to PA) consumes 25mW, while in the receive mode, the iv receiver chain (LNA to Demodulator) consumes 5mW. The Integer-N Frequency Synthesizer consumes 8.5mW. Other Low power circuits are reported; A 13.56 Passive RFID tag and a low power ADC suitable for Built-In-Testing applications.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a network, whose nodes communicate with the ZigBee wireless network protocol, and control this network with a PC through the Internet. One of the nodes of this network is designed to be master node. The other nodes are slave nodes. The master node can be connected to an Ethernet connected to the Internet. A PC can communicate with the master node via a specific web application over the Internet. The communication between a web server, in which the specific web application is loaded, and the master node is performed using a specific application protocol working over TCP/IP and defined in this thesis. The master node controls the slave nodes of the wireless network formed according to the commands given by the user of a PC over the Internet. The master node contains an implementation of the ZigBee stack along with a suitable application software to communicate with the slave nodes. The master node also contains an implementation of the TCP/IP stack along with a suitable application software to communicate with a web server in which the specific web application is loaded. The slave nodes contain an implementation of the ZigBee stack along with a suitable application software to communicate with the master node. For each type of node, appropriate hardware which is compliant with the software contained by that type of node is used. Each type of node uses microcontroller-based hardware.

<p>Den här C-uppsatsens mål är att undersöka om den trådlösa tekniken ZigBee är lämplig att använda i en industriell miljö. Arbetet med uppsatsen har utförts i Trolhättan (Sverige) i företaget Binar Elektronik AB:s lokaler. Bakgrunden till detta samarbete är att Binar vill veta om ZigBee är ett lämpligt val för en av deras framtida produkter.</p><p>Uppsatsen är uppdelad i fyra delar, där den första och inledande delen översiktligt beskriver begreppet ZigBee. Den här delen innehåller även en marknadsundersökning rörande ZigBee-hårdvara. Uppsatsen fortsätter sedan med nästa del där en specialisering mot en specifik ZigBee-hårdvara tar vid. Den ZigBee-modul som valdes kallas Xbee och den blev utvald baserat på resultatet från marknadsundersökningen. Den här delen beskriver även den kod som utvecklats för att på ett effektivt sätt kommunicera med Xbee-modulen.</p><p>Uppsatsens tredje del består av ett antal praktiska tester i olika miljöer, vars mål är att påvisa vilka styrkor och svagheter som ZigBee-tekniken har i respektive miljö. Den här delen innehåller även ett räckviddstest av Xbee-modulen. Den sista och avslutande delen innehåller uppsatsens resultat och slutsatser. Dessa slutsatser visar tydlig att Xbee-modulen, och dess ZigBee-tekniken, har stor potential att uppfylla de krav som ställs på ett trådlöst system i en industriell miljö. Det måste dock noteras att denna slutsats ej bör tas ur sitt sammanhang och att den således endast är giltig för de testmiljöer som den här uppsatsen behandlat.</p> / <p>This Bachelor of Science thesis has the primary objective to investigate whether or not the wireless technology ZigBee is suitable for industry usage. The thesis work has been done in collaboration with Binar Elektronik AB (Trollhättan, Sweden). The background story for this collaboration is that Binar is interested in finding out if ZigBee is suitable for one of their upcoming products.</p><p>The thesis is divided into four main parts, beginning with a researching part concerning ZigBee as a concept and a market research on ZigBee hardware. The thesis continuous with a specialization towards one ZigBee hardware, the ZigBee module from MaxStream called Xbee. The Xbee module was chosen based on the result from the market research. This part also describes the code that has been developed for the Xbee module, which main purpose is to simplify communication with the module.</p><p>The next part of the thesis contains a number of different field tests that show how ZigBee communication is affected in different environments. This part also includes a range test with the Xbee module. The last part of the thesis contains the final results and conclusions, which clearly show that the ZigBee technology, and Xbee in particular, has a potential to satisfy the requirements for a wireless system in an industrial environment. This conclusion concerning the industrial usability of ZigBee should however be seen in the light of this particular thesis work, making this conclusion viable only for the field test environments.</p> / See hompage http://www.wettergren.se/zigbee/.