Wireless networks make extensive use of broadcast messages. Many routing activities and network management activities needed in wireless networks must rely on broadcast authentication mechanisms to ensure that data is being originated from a valid source. Without an efficient broadcast authentication algorithm, the transmitting node would have to resort to per-node unicast messages, which does not scale to large networks and is easy to compromise also. The goal of this work is to provide an efficient scheme for sensor network broadcast authentication by considering different properties of broadcast authentication. Here, a protocol is proposed Enhanced Chinese Remainder Theorem based Broadcast Authentication (ECRTBA), for wireless sensor networks. ECRTBA uses Chinese Remainder Theorem to associate the authenticating procedure of the authentication key and the Message Authentication Code of broadcast messages together. The important feature the scheme is having is that it uses the concept of independent keys which support infinite rounds of broadcasts. The scheme also provides instant authentication with no need of buffering.

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