Semi Random Pair-wise key Pre-distribution Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

To achieve security in wireless sensor networks, it is important to be able to encrypt and authenticate messages sent among sensor nodes. Keys for encryption and authentication purposes must be agreed upon by communicating nodes. Key establishment in sensor networks is a challenging problem because asymmetric key cryptosystems are unsuitable for use in resource constrained sensor nodes, and also because the nodes could be physically compromised by an adversary. We present three new mechanisms for key establishment using the framework of predistributing a random set of keys to each node. First, in the q-composite keys scheme, we trade off the un-likeliness of a large-scale network attack in order to significantly strengthen random key predistribution’s strength against smaller-scale attacks. Second, in the multipathreinforcement scheme, we show how to strengthen the security between any two nodes by leveraging the security of other links. Finally, we present the randompairwise keys scheme, which perfectly preserves the secrecy of the rest of the network when any node is captured, and also enables node-to-node authentication and quorum-based revocation.