A Low Energy Key Management Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

Security has become an essential requirement for some realistic applications on wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, the stringent constraints on sensor nodes make security providing in WSNs very challenging. In this paper, we propose an improved key management scheme named as low energy key management (LEKM) for WSNs. In LEKM scheme, a key cluster consisting of multi continuous keys is stored into each sensor node in the key pre-distribution phase, and then the secure network connection is searched based on the overlap of key clusters. Then the security performance is analyzed. We also simulated the performance of the LEKM scheme. The results show that the energy consumption is reduced and the security performance is enhanced by comparison with the q-composite random key pre-distribution scheme and the multi-path key reinforcement scheme.