Ad-hoc Personal Area Networks and Wireless Sensor Networks (AWSNs) suffer a number of limitations due to deficiencies in existing routing and security mechanisms. Common research problems and issues include Trusted Routing, Relationship obfuscation, Secure Service Discovery, Intrusion Detection, Intruder identification and isolation, Node Security, User-friendly configuration and self-organization.

AWISSENET aims to address the above problems as follows:

• Design a trusted route discovery and maintenance protocol using the distributed trust model and cross-layer metrics.
• Identify normal and anomaly patterns and develop algorithms for intrusion detection and intruder identification in wireless Ad Hoc & Sensor networks.
• Study the importance of parameters other than contents and how they can be used to find out the originator of messages. Examine effectiveness and cost of obfuscation strategies against the detectors.
• Implement a lightweight AWSN toolbox with minimal footprint, power consumption and OS requirements,  adaptable to a large variety of mobile/nomadic devices and tiny sensor nodes, and highly secure against side-attacks.
• Implement applications to demonstrate the AWSN toolbox functionality in different environments.
• Prototype and validate the proposed architecture and protocol toolbox in a large trial of more than 100 sensor nodes, consisting of sensors/MOTES, wireless cameras and RFID tags/readers.

At the end of AWISSENET, we expect to have a lightweight AWSN security toolbox with minimal footprint and OS requirements, fully tested and validated.