A High Connectivity Pre-Distribution Key Management Scheme in Grid-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Key management is a decisive part for security in wireless sensor networks. Pre-distribution of secret keys for all pairs of nodes is not viable due to the large amount of memory used when the number of sensor node is huge. Recently, a random key pre-distribution scheme is proposed as an efficient solution for sharing keys among sensor nodes to reduce the length of shared key and avoid unnecessary key assignments. By studying the range of the communication signal in sensor nodes, we can improve the pre-distribution key mechanism, thus get a higher connectivity possibility between sensor nodes in the whole network. In this paper, we present a grid-based scheme with novel approach for key-distribution mechanism based on the communication range of sensor nodes that guarantees a high probability of sharing keys between sensor nodes. Our evaluation and simulation show that our approach outperforms the existing schemes in both high connectivity probability and low memory usage.