A Novel Cluster Reformation Scheme to Improve Key Pre-distribution for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are becoming increasingly popular, as their usage is extended to a wide range of applications. Security plays a pivotal role in wireless sensor networks, as the data handled by the network are often sensitive. Since the network is vulnerable to various types of attacks there is a need to build efficient security services in them for secure data communication. The processing and energy limitation of the sensor nodes pose a greater challenge and make the implementation of complex security measures impossible. A variety of key pre distribution schemes were proposed in the literature to provide security in wireless sensor networks. Inspite of various improvements in the key distribution schemes the nodes are still getting compromised and a separate mechanism is not provided to filter out the malicious node. In this paper a mathematical model for novel cluster reformation technique is proposed to improve the key pre distribution scheme along with the malicious node detection and removal. Here the process of manipulation of information in the key spaces is included along with regrouping of nodes to improve the resilience of the network. Cluster reformation significantly decreases the number of nodes which provide the intruder with useful information thereby decreasing the chances of the network getting compromised .The results show that the cluster gets reformed effectively as the number of nodes getting compromised approaches the threshold i.e. the value above which there is a possibility of the entire communication getting compromised.