A Deterministic Pairwise Key Pre-distribution Scheme for Mobile Sensor Networks

Key management is paramount for mobile sensor network (MSN) security. Due to the characteristics of MSNs, key management must enable direct (without intermediaries) key establishment between two arbitrary nodes. We apply combinatorial design theory to pre-distribute Blundo’s polynomials to MSN nodes. This approach is further combined with Liu and Ning polynomial evaluation optimization yet increasing the scalability of polynomials. It also solves the combinatorial design existence problem of Çamtepe and Yener key pre-distribution scheme (KPS) without a decrease in network scalability or resiliency. The analysis in this paper indicates that this scheme has a number of nice properties, including direct pairwise key establishment, which enables authentication, tolerance to node captures, increased scalability and very low computational and communication overhead.