Submitted to IEEE Syracuse Workshop , 25 June 1 An Energy - efficient Approach to Securing Distributed Sensor Networks ( DSN ) ( Extended Summary )

-Recent advances in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, wireless communications, and digital electronics have enabled the development of low-cost, low-power, multifunctional sensor nodes. These tiny sensor nodes, which consist of sensing, data processing, and communicating components, leverage the idea of sensor networks based on collaborative effort of a large number of nodes. On the other hand, confidentiality, integrity, and authentication services are critical to preventing an adversary from compromising the security of a distributed sensor network. Key management is likewise critical to establishing the keys necessary to provide this protection. However, providing key management is difficult due to the ad hoc nature, intermittent connectivity, and resource limitations of the sensor network environment. In this paper, the main performance requirements for securing ad hoc sensor networks are analyzed. Based on those requirements, we suggest a self-organized sensor network architecture that can provide flexible key management scheme. We further discuss an energy-efficient approach to re-keying in such a scalable network topology. Our conclusion is that the security problem in sensor networks cannot simply follow existing security schemes in typical networks such as general ad hoc networks and Internet since sensor networks has its own features such as very limited energy, large amount of nodes and frequent routing change. Index Terms -Sensor networks, wireless networks, security