A Grid-based Approach to Location-Dependent Key Management in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

To achieve secure communications in wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes should be able to establishsecret shared keys with neighboring parties. The location information of sensor nodes can beused to generate a shared key. In this paper, we propose yet another location-based key managementscheme for wireless sensor networks. After reviewing the existing location-based key managementschemes, we focus on the scheme called LDK because of its pros and cons. To solve a communicationinterference problem in LDK and its similar methods, we devise the new key revision processthat incorporates the grid-based location information. We also propose the key establishment processusing the grid information. For analysis, we conducted a simulation and confirmed that our methodcan increase the connectivity while decrease the compromise ratio when the minimum number ofcommon keys required for key establishment is high. Finally, we also found that hexagonal deploymentof anchor nodes can save network costs in our method.