Abstract: Sensor nodes are low-power and low-cost devices with the requirement of a long autonomous lifetime. Therefore, the nodes have to use the available power carefully and avoid expensive computations or radio transmissions. In addition, as some wireless sensor networks (WSNs) process sensitive data, selecting a security protocol is vital. Cryptographic methods used in WSNs should fulfill the constraints of sensor nodes and should be evaluated for their security and power consumption. WSN engineers use several metrics to obtain estimations prior to network deployment. These metrics are usually related to power and execution time estimation. However, security is a feature that cannot be estimated and it is either "active" or "inactive", with no possibility of introducing intermediate security levels. This lack of flexibility is a disadvantage in real deployments where different operation modes with different security and power specifications are often needed. This paper proposes including a new security estimation metric in a previously proposed framework for WSN simulation and embedded software (SW) performance analysis. This metric is called Security Estimation Metric (SEM) and it provides information about the security encryption used in WSN transmissions. Results show that the metric improves flexibility, granularity and execution time compared to other cryptographic tests.

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