Title
Scalable and efficient key management for heterogeneous sensor networks
Abstract
As typical wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have resource limitations, predistribution of secret keys is possibly the most practical approach for secure network communications. In this paper, we propose a key management scheme based on random key predistribution for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (HSNs). As large-scale homogeneous networks suffer from high costs of communication, computation, and storage requirements, the HSNs are preferred because they provide better performance and security solutions for scalable applications in dynamic environments. We consider hierarchical HSN consisting of a small number high-end sensors and a large number of low-end sensors. To address storage overhead problem in the constraint sensor nodes, we incorporate a key generation process, where instead of generating a large pool of random keys, a key pool is represented by a small number of generation keys. For a given generation key and a publicly known seed value, a keyed-hash function generates a key chain; these key chains collectively make a key pool. As dynamic network topology is native to WSNs, the proposed scheme allows dynamic addition and removal of nodes. This paper also reports the implementation and the performance of the proposed scheme on Crossbow’s MicaZ motes running TinyOS. The results indicate that the proposed scheme can be applied efficiently in resource-constrained sensor networks. We evaluate the computation and storage costs of two keyed-hash algorithms for key chain generation, HMAC-SHA1 and HMAC-MD5.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-008-0184-2
The Journal of Supercomputing
Keywords
Field
DocType
Security,Key management,Heterogeneous sensor networks,Random key predistribution,Authentication
Key management,Key distribution in wireless sensor networks,Wireless network,Key generation,Telecommunications network,Authentication,Computer science,Computer network,Wireless sensor network,Scalability,Distributed computing
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
45
1
0920-8542
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
21
0.89
30
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Firdous Kausar113712.79
Sajid Hussain240143.72
Laurence T. Yang36870682.61
Ashraf Masood410910.28