A location-aware authentication and key management scheme for wireless sensor networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is generally deployed in an uncontrolled environment where it can be the target of many security attacks trying to compromise its normal operation. Consequently, providing security for data exchanged in a WSN is one of the main requirements to allow the accomplishment of its mission. This paper, proposes a location-aware key authentication and distribution mechanism to secure WSNs where the key establishment is performed using elliptic curve cryptography and identity-based public key scheme. In this scheme, public key authentication is based on the position of the sensor node in the monitored area. Before establishing a pairwise key between two nodes, each one of them must verify the neighborhood location of the other node using a message authentication code calculated on the corresponding public key using keys derived from encrypted beacons broadcast by anchor nodes. We show that the proposed public key authentication and distribution scheme is more resilient to node replication attack and generates less communication overhead than currently available location dependent schemes.