Secure overlays: Making static key distribution schemes work with mobile base stations in WSNs

Abstract

We introduce the concept of secure overlays over static key distribution schemes to enable the use of mobile base stations for secure data querying in wireless sensor networks. Secure overlays are key distributions initialized from fixed initialization points, allowing queries to be inserted anywhere in the network. We thereby overcome the need for re-keying when a base station moves, at the cost that a query only spreads in a limited part of the network along the key distribution. On the example of a layered key distribution and a query dissemination protocol we argue that the use of only a few secure overlays can compensate for that artifact. Queries sent from within the area defined by the initialization points reach a significant part of the sensor nodes within the first few hops. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.