A new approach for random key pre‐distribution in large‐scale wireless sensor networks

Abstract

AbstractIn a wireless sensor network (WSN), pre‐distribution of secret keys is possibly the most practical approach to protect network communications. To meet the stringent resource constraints of the sensor nodes, key pre‐distribution schemes should be highly efficient, require as little storage space as possible, and at the same time, maintain a strong security strength, that is, high resilience against node capture. In this paper, a new approach for random key pre‐distribution is proposed to achieve both efficiency and security goals. The novelty of this approach lies in that, instead of using a key pool consisting of random keys, a key generation technique is carefully designed such that a large number of random keys can be represented by a small number of key‐generation keys. Then, instead of storing a big number of random keys, each sensor node stores a small number of key‐generation keys while computing the shared secret keys during the bootstrapping phase on the fly using the computationally efficient hash function. The proposed scheme outperforms the previous random key pre‐distribution schemes in that it reduces the storage requirement significantly while holding the comparable security strength, as shown by our thorough analysis and simulation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.