An Authenticated Key Management Scheme for Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

Key Management is a critical security service in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It is an essential cryptographic primitive upon which other security primitives are built. The most critical security requirements in WSNs include authentication and confidentiality. These security requirements can be provided by a key management but it is difficult due to the ad hoc nature, intermittent connectivity, and resource limitations of the sensor networks. In this paper we propose an authenticated key management (AKM) scheme for hierarchical networks based on the random key pre-distribution. Further, a secure cluster formation algorithm is proposed. The base station periodically refreshes the network key, which provides the following: a) the authenticated network communication, and b) a global and continuous authentication of each network entity. Multiple level of encryption is provided by using two keys: 1) a pair-wise shared key between nodes, and 2) a network key. The AKM scheme is more resilient to node capture as compared to other random key pre-distribution schemes. The proposed key management scheme can be applied for different routing and energy efficient data dissemination techniques for sensor networks.

[1]  Bruce H. Krogh,et al.  Lightweight detection and classification for wireless sensor networks in realistic environments , 2005, SenSys '05.

[2]  Ian F. Akyildiz,et al.  Sensor Networks , 2002, Encyclopedia of GIS.

[3]  Ricardo Dahab,et al.  SecLEACH - A Random Key Distribution Solution for Securing Clustered Sensor Networks , 2006, Fifth IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA'06).

[4]  M. Welsh,et al.  Vital Signs Monitoring and Patient Tracking Over a Wireless Network , 2005, 2005 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology 27th Annual Conference.

[5]  Sasikanth Avancha,et al.  Security for Sensor Networks , 2004 .

[6]  Stefano Basagni,et al.  Secure pebblenets , 2001, MobiHoc '01.

[7]  Donggang Liu,et al.  Location-based pairwise key establishments for static sensor networks , 2003, SASN '03.

[8]  C. Karlof,et al.  Secure routing in wireless sensor networks: attacks and countermeasures , 2003, Proceedings of the First IEEE International Workshop on Sensor Network Protocols and Applications, 2003..

[9]  Wendi Heinzelman,et al.  Energy-efficient communication protocol for wireless microsensor networks , 2000, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[10]  T Beth,et al.  Proc. of the EUROCRYPT 84 workshop on Advances in cryptology: theory and application of cryptographic techniques , 1985 .

[11]  Taieb Znati,et al.  RECA: a ring-structured energy-efficient clustering architecture for robust communication in wireless sensor networks , 2007, Int. J. Sens. Networks.

[12]  Randy H. Katz,et al.  Next century challenges: mobile networking for “Smart Dust” , 1999, MobiCom.

[13]  Taieb Znati,et al.  RECA: A Ring-Structured Energy-Efficient Cluster Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2005, MSN.

[14]  Shouhuai Xu,et al.  Establishing pairwise keys for secure communication in ad hoc networks: a probabilistic approach , 2003, 11th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, 2003. Proceedings..

[15]  Dawn Xiaodong Song,et al.  Random key predistribution schemes for sensor networks , 2003, 2003 Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2003..

[16]  Peter Kruus,et al.  CONSTRAINTS AND APPROACHES FOR DISTRIBUTED SENSOR NETWORK SECURITY , 2000 .

[17]  Stephan Olariu,et al.  Scalable cryptographic key management in wireless sensor networks , 2004, 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops, 2004. Proceedings..

[18]  Fei Hu,et al.  M SPECTRA : Secure Power-Efficient Clustered-Topology Routing Algorithm in Large-scale Wireless micro-Sensor Networks , 2005 .

[19]  Jennifer C. Hou,et al.  Wireless sensor networks , 2004, IEEE Wirel. Commun..

[20]  Moti Yung,et al.  Perfectly Secure Key Distribution for Dynamic Conferences , 1992, Inf. Comput..

[21]  Radha Poovendran,et al.  A key management scheme in distributed sensor networks using attack probabilities , 2005, GLOBECOM '05. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, 2005..

[22]  Rolf Blom,et al.  An Optimal Class of Symmetric Key Generation Systems , 1985, EUROCRYPT.

[23]  Virgil D. Gligor,et al.  A key-management scheme for distributed sensor networks , 2002, CCS '02.