A High Performance and Intrinsically Secure Key Establishment Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Computer Networks, Volume 55, Issue 8, 1 June 2011, Pages 1849–1863

Ali fanian; Mehdi Berenjkoub ; Hossin Saidi; T. Aaron Gulliver

Abstract: Key establishment among neighboring sensors is the most challenging issue for achieving
security services such as authentication and confidentiality in wireless sensor networks. Many key
establishment schemes have recently been proposed, but most have security or performance issues. In
this paper, we propose a novel key establishment protocol which is suitable for low resource sensor
nodes. In this protocol, each sensor has a secret key and some common keys with other sensors. A
common key between two sensors is generated using the secret of one sensor along with the identity
of the other sensor. This key is stored in one of the sensors, and the other sensor generates it when a
secure connection is required. We develop the proposed protocol for different key distribution models.
These models use pre-deployment knowledge to distribute the common keys among sensors. The
proposed scheme is analyzed based on connectivity, scalability, memory consumption and resistance
against attacks. In comparison with previous approaches, the proposed protocol is the most resilient
against compromised node attacks, and has with low memory and energy consumption.