A Secure and Energy-Efficient Key Generation Mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper enhances the data confidentiality and energy saving of an existing solution. Our approach utilizes encrypted message as a key generator (KG) for the next message. Thus, a KG that used to be exposed is now encrypted. A masking policy is incorporated to an encryption technique to further improve the data confidentiality. Furthermore, the proposed method no longer requires a transmission of extra information in a form of KGs reducing energy consumption incurred by data transmission. Analysis shows that the proposed method significantly increases encryption strength and minimizes the damage area from the entire network down to a single node. At the same time, our method reduces the traffic volume, excluding network protocol headers, down to 50%. Thus, our solution is ideal for extending the lifespan of a WSN while providing a solid security level.