An improved key pre-distribution scheme based on the security level classification of keys for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

The use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in any real-world application requires a certain level of security. To provide security of operations such as message exchange, key management schemes have to be well adapted to the particularities of WSNs. Unfortunately, the resource limitation of sensor nodes poses a great challenge for designing an efficient and effective key establishment scheme for WSNs. This paper proposes a novel key management scheme. In the proposed scheme, the pre-distributed keys in nodes are classified different security levels and the higher security level of the pre-distributed key in compromised nodes will disclose the fewer pre-distributed keys in the uncompromised nodes than that of the lower security level of the pre-distributed key. The proposed scheme is analysed based on connectivity, resistance against attacks, memory consumption and communication overhead. Simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme has a good resilience against node compromising attacks compared to the existing schemes.