A new hybrid key pre-distribution scheme for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

This article presents a novel hybrid key pre-distribution scheme based on combinatorial design keys and pair-wise keys. For the presented scheme, the deployment zone is cleft into equal-sized cells. We use the combinatorial design based keys to secure intra-cell communication, which helps to maintain low key storage overhead in the network. For inter-cell communication, each cell maintain multiple associations with all the other cells within communication range and these associations are secured with pair-wise keys. This helps to ensure high resiliency against compromised sensor nodes in the network. We provide in-depth analysis for the presented scheme. We measure the resiliency of the presented scheme by calculating fraction of links effected and fraction of nodes disconnected when adversary compromises some sensor nodes in the network. We find that the presented scheme has high resiliency than majority of existing schemes. Our presented scheme also has low storage overhead than existing schemes.