Network Decoupling: A Methodology for Secure Communications in Wireless Sensor Networks

—Many wireless sensor network (WSN) applications demand secure communications. The random key predistribution protocol has been well accepted in achieving secure communications in WSNs. A host of key management protocols have been proposed based on the protocol. However, due to the randomness in key distribution and strong constraint in key path construction, the protocols can only be applied in highly dense networks, which are not always feasible in practice. In this paper, we propose a methodology called to address this problem. With this methodology, a WSN is decoupled into a and a , which significantly releases the constraint in key path construction of the protocol. We design two new key management protocols, that is, and , as well as a set of link and path dependency elimination rules in decoupled sensor networks. Our analytical and simulation data demonstrate the performance enhancement of our solutions from the perspective of connectivity and resilience and its applicability in nonhighly dense sensor networks.

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