A hash chains based key management scheme for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

High secure connectivity and invulnerability are two important goals of wireless sensor networks. However, many existing key management schemes for wireless sensor networks cannot achieve the two goals simultaneously. To solve the problem, the paper proposed a key management scheme based on hash chains and auxiliary nodes. In the scheme, adjacent sensor nodes can establish shared session keys with high probabilities; besides, the validity of chain keys including their identifiers can be distinguished by hash functions. Analyses show that the scheme not only can achieve the two goals to secure wireless sensor networks, but also can has advantages in terms of storage, communication overhead, and computation overhead. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.