A Key Management Technique to Secure Information Sharing of the Nodes within a Cluster of WSN

Abstract

The nodes within a cluster of Wireless Sensor Network deployed in adverse areas face the security threats of eavesdropping and capturing. The fundamental issue in wireless sensor network security is to initialize secure communication between sensor nodes by setting up secret keys between communicating nodes. Because of limited hardware capacity, conventional network cryptography is infeasible for sensor network. In this paper a key management technique is proposed for clustered sensor network that uses some cryptographic operation to generate secret keys. This key is updated in response to the message of cluster head or base station. The key update instructions are stored in each sensor nodes before deployed in sensor field. The updated secret key is used to communicate between nodes and cluster head.