Work

Secure and Efficient Authentication Protocol for Underwater Wireless Sensor Network Environments Using PUF

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) are increasingly used in marine monitoring and naval coastal surveillance, where limited bandwidth, long propagation delays, and physically exposed nodes make efficient authentication critical. This paper analyzes the maritime-surveillance-oriented protocol of Jain and Hussain and identifies vulnerabilities to physical capture, replay, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. We propose a PUF-assisted mutual authentication and session key agreement protocol for UWSNs. The design relies on lightweight symmetric primitives (one-way hash and XOR) and uses a fuzzy extractor to support stable PUF-based key material. In addition, a lightweight continuous authentication procedure is introduced to facilitate fast re-authentication under intermittent link disruptions commonly observed in underwater communication. Security is evaluated using BAN logic, the Real-or-Random (ROR) model, and security verification with the Scyther tool. An analytical overhead evaluation reports a computational cost of 5.972 ms per mutual authentication and a 1152-bit communication overhead, supporting a practical security–efficiency trade-off for resource-constrained UWSN deployments.

Source: Applied Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/app16020873

Authors: Jinsu Ahn, Deokkyu Kwon, Youngho Park

Institutions: Agency for Defense Development, Kyungpook National University

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Authentication Protocols Security

Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896

Funders: National Research Foundation, National Research Foundation of Korea, Ministry of Science and ICT, South Korea