Distributed node authentication in wireless sensor networks

We address the issue of node authenticity in large sensor networks. Only sensor nodes that are verified can be accepted by the network. In this paper, we propose distributed node authentication schemes which rely on public information and the majority rules. In the basic scheme, each node's neighbors stores its identity and location information. When node A needs to check the authenticity of node B, it obtains information from node B's neighbors. To cut down the communication overhead of the basic scheme, we propose an improved scheme in which the terrain is divided into zones. Each node's vouchers disseminate in all zones. Therefore, node A can obtain information from node B's vouchers in the zone that it resides in. Analysis and simulation results show that the distributed schemes are effective and adaptable.