Work in Progress: Side-Channel Watermarking for LoRaWAN Using Robust Inter-Packet Timing: An experimental approach

Low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) enable a vast number of sensors to be connected in a low-maintenance, low-cost, and easily deploy-able way. Conventional cryptogra-phy measures used to provide secure communication in such networks, often result in a higher on-air time, which directly increases the energy consumption. Also the additional message size needed may exceed the actual payload. This paper combines the concept of sensor data watermarking together with side-channel utilization to satisfy integrity protection of sensor data without the need to sacrifice payload size for message authen-tication codes (MACs). Practical experiments using LoRaWAN over The Things Network (TTN) show that watermarks can be embedded in a side-channel without significantly changing the channel characteristics thus making the security fully transparent to the original data transmission both in terms of payload and timing characteristics.