Energy Efficient Key Management Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a technology of various uses from monitoring surrounding environment to collecting data. Because WSNs operate with limited resources of sensor nodes, its life is extended by cluster-based routing methods. However, WSNs which communicate through a wireless transmission medium are quite vulnerable in terms of security compared to wired networks and their sensor nodes have very limited communication and computing capacities and a small memory space. For these reasons, it is difficult to apply the established public key encryption technology. Accordingly, a large number of sensor nodes should be tolerable to errors and failures, and it is essential to achieve effective management and reinforced security functions through autonomous network construction. The cluster-based routing protocol proposed in this study showed energy-efficient key management by establishing a common shared key through the key of key ring or through authentication by a reliable institution.