Improving Identity-based Random Key Establishment Scheme for Large-Scale Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel identity-based random key pre-distribution scheme called the identity based key pre-distribution using a pseudo random function (IBPRF), which has better trade-off between communication overhead, network connectivity and resilience against node capture compared to the other existing key predistribution schemes. IBPRF always guarantees that no matter how many sensor nodes are captured, the secret communication between non-compromised sensor nodes are still secure. We then propose an improved version of our scheme in a large-scale hierarchical wireless sensor network. This improved approach has better trade off among network connectivity, security, communication, computational and storage overheads, and scalability than the existing random key pre-distribution schemes. The strength of the proposed IBPRF scheme and its improved approach is establishing pairwise secret keys between neighboring nodes with scantling communication and computational overheads. The improved IBPRF approach further supports a large-scale sensor network for the network connectivity. Through the analysis we show that the improved IBPRF scheme provides better security and lower overheads than other existing schemes.