A Lightweight Homomorphic Digital Signature Scheme for the Internet of Things

In this paper, we study the problem of secure data aggregation in the Internet of Things (IoT) for eHealth. It has been previously shown that in-network aggregation extends the lifetime of self-powered nodes in Body Area Networks (BANs). Nonetheless, the computation of digital signatures for aggregate traffic using the traditional techniques is not energy-effective. We propose a lightweight homomorphic signature scheme supporting the execution of aggregation operations without affecting the verification process. Experimental results show that this scheme significantly reduces the communication and processing overhead. This allows improving the energy consumption by 30% compared to existing homomorphic signature techniques.