A Key Establishment Scheme for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks Using Post-Deployment Knowledge

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel key establishment scheme for mobile wireless sensor networks that leverages post-deployment knowledge to enhance security and connectivity, addressing resource constraints and mobility challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a new scheme based on post-deployment knowledge, improving upon existing key prioritization techniques for better security and network connectivity in mobile sensor networks.

Findings

Provides a flexible scheme applicable to any deployment topology.

Achieves improved network connectivity and security.

Works efficiently within resource constraints.

Abstract

Establishment of pairwise keys between sensor nodes in a sensor network is a difficult problem due to resource limitations of sensor nodes as well as vulnerability to physical captures of sensor nodes by the enemy. Public-key cryptosystems are not much suited for most resource-constrained sensor networks. Recently, elliptic curve cryptographic techniques show that public key cryptosystem is also feasible for resource-constrained sensor networks. However, most researchers accept that the symmetric key cryptosystems are viable options for resource-constrained sensor networks. In this paper, we first develop a basic principle to address the key pre-distribution problem in mobile sensor networks. Then, using this developed basic principle, we propose a scheme which takes the advantage of the post-deployment knowledge. Our scheme is a modified version of the key prioritization technique proposed by Liu and Ning. Our improved scheme provides reasonable network connectivity and security. Moreover, the proposed scheme works for any deployment topology.