A hybrid key management scheme for Heterogeneous wireless sensor networks based on ECC and trivariate symmetric polynomial

Abstract

Key management is a major challenge to achieve security in wireless sensor networks. Previous research on sensor network security mainly considers homogeneous sensor networks, where all sensor nodes have the same capabilities. The recent research has shown that the survivability of the homogeneous sensor network can be improved if sensor nodes are grouped in clusters in which a powerful cluster head assigned. In this paper, we adopt a Heterogeneous Sensor Network (HSN) model for better performance and security. We proposed a novel key management scheme, which utilizes Elliptic Curve Cryptography and the t-degree trivariate symmetric polynomial in the design of an efficient key management scheme for sensor nodes. In addition, we also design a dynamic key update technique based on one-way hash chain and Time Slice mechanism which significantly reduced the communication overhead in key agreement and update phase. The performance evaluation and security analysis show that the proposed key management scheme can provide perfect resilience against node capture and scalability with significant saving on communication overhead and storage space.