A Power Efficient Path Key Establishment Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper assesses the power consumption of a proposed algorithm for path key establishment for wireless sensor networks. This algorithm elects trusted common nodes called "Proxies" residing in an existing secure path linking two sensor nodes which can be used to transmit the new generated key. The generated key is divided into a number of parts depending on the number of elected proxies. Our proposed approach is assessed against two existing algorithms and the results clearly show that our algorithm discovers proxies faster with proxies being located fewer hops away from both end nodes, thus resulting in shorter path lengths when compared against existing algorithms. The average power consumed by the involved sensor nodes in the proxy search process has been studied and evaluated in this work. The power analyses have shown that our algorithm yield significant power savings thus helping to increase the lifetime of the sensor nodes. Therefore, our proposed algorithm is power efficient and is suitable for deployment in wireless sensor networks infrastructure.