Establishing pairwise keys in distributed sensor networks

Abstract

Pairwise key establishment is a fundamental security service in sensor networks; it enables sensor nodes to communicate securely with each other using cryptographic techniques. However, due to the resource constraints on sensor nodes, it is not feasible to use traditional key management techniques such as public key cryptography and key distribution center (KDC). A number of key predistribution techniques have been proposed for pairwise key establishment in sensor networks recently. To facilitate the study of novel pairwise key predistribution techniques, this paper develops a general framework for establishing pairwise keys between sensor nodes using bivariate polynomials. This paper then proposes two efficient instantiations of the general framework: a random subset assignment key predistribution scheme, and a hypercube-based key predistribution scheme. The analysis shows that both schemes have a number of nice properties, including high probability, or guarantee to establish pairwise keys, tolerance of node captures, and low storage, communication, and computation overhead. To further reduce the computation at sensor nodes, this paper presents an optimization technique for polynomial evaluation, which is used to compute pairwise keys. This paper also reports the implementation and the performance of the proposed schemes on MICA2 motes running TinyOS, an operating system for networked sensors. The results indicate that the proposed techniques can be applied efficiently in resource-constrained sensor networks.

A Key Management Scheme for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

“…We make an assumption that a class 1 sensor only can set up safe connection with those class 1 sensors which are the closest to it in different groups. For instance, in Fig.1, the class 1 sensor in 0 C only can set up safe connection with all class 1 nodes in 1 C , 2 C , 3 C , 4 C , 5 C and 6 C . The probability, ( ) p β , that two class 1 nodes in different groups share β sub key-strings is calculated as follows…”

“…Those architectures can be homogeneous, heterogeneous, hierarchical, distributed, etc [2] . In distributed wireless sensor networks, sensors employ pre-distributed keys which are generated by using keying materials [3] . In heterogeneous wireless sensor networks, sensors may have different capabilities, including computing ability, communication ranges, storages, etc [4] .…”

Security Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

“…They must also be self-organize to conduct key management and building trust relation among sensors. A number of key pre-distribution schemes have been proposed in the context of symmetric encryption [12,13].…”

Physiological Value Based Privacy Preservation of Patient's Data Using Elliptic Curve Cryptography

“…Pre-loaded symmetric shared keys are used in large scale sensor networks for geographical region observations [17,18]. In these techniques, a certain key is loaded in each node and used to derive a shared secret key.…”