Scientists of the North Caucasus University on Guard of Smart Cities

Specialists from the North Caucasian Federal University (NCFU), together with researchers from the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences and colleagues from Mexico, the Republic of Korea and Uruguay, have developed a unique communication protocol for the operation of smart cities. The information was published in the scientific journal Sensors.

A smart city is a complex infrastructure with elements of video surveillance, emergency call systems, biometric systems, city and banking services, as well as intelligent transport. For such large-scale networks, fast connection, reliability and security of data exchange are critical.

The developed protocol uses adaptive multipath routing. Thus, it not only increases the resistance of the sensor network to various types of attacks, but also simplifies the process of creating and maintaining a city.

The protocol is based on the routing of the MANET (Mobile Ad hoc Networks) network, where each node participates in forwarding data for other nodes. “In such networks, there are no complexities of setting up infrastructure and administration, which allows devices to create networks and instantly connect to them,” explained Andrey Gladkov, junior researcher at the Center for Computational Mathematics and Parallel Programming on Supercomputers of the NCFU.

The new approach uses residual class systems and secret sharing schemes. The information encryption key is shared among all network participants, while for decryption you need to collect all the fragments of the key. This method provides additional security, since an attacker will not be able to use a separately intercepted fragment.

According to the researchers, the new protocol does not face the limitations of traditional types of encryption. This reduces data redundancy and saves energy and message storage space.

“The further task of the scientific team is to improve the created protocol, as well as to assemble the network that works with it for further testing,” Gladkov concluded.