Scalable and efficient key management for heterogeneous sensor networks

Firdous Kausar, Sajid Hussain, Laurence T. Yang, Ashraf Masood
2008 Journal of Supercomputing  
As typical wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have resource limitations, predistribution of secret keys is possibly the most practical approach for secure network communications. In this paper, we propose a key management scheme based on random key predistribution for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (HSNs). As large-scale homogeneous networks suffer from high costs of communication, computation, and storage requirements, the HSNs are preferred because they provide better performance and
more » ... rity solutions for scalable applications in dynamic environments. We consider hierarchical HSN consisting of a small number high-end sensors and a large number of low-end sensors. To address storage overhead problem in the constraint sensor nodes, we incorporate a key generation process, where instead of generating a large pool of random keys, a key pool is represented by a small number of generation keys. For a given generation key and a publicly known seed value, a keyed-hash function generates a key chain; these key chains collectively make a key pool. As dynamic network topology is native to WSNs, the proposed scheme allows
doi:10.1007/s11227-008-0184-2 fatcat:sdfvhxasg5aqtng7gtitinscbi