A key management scheme in wireless sensor networks based on Behavior Trust

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are often deployed in unattended and hostile environments. In order to protect the sensitive data and securing communication, secret keys should be used to encrypt the exchanged messages between communicating nodes. In this paper, we propose a self-organizing key management scheme based on trust model and Bilinear Pairing, called Behavior Trust-Based Keying (BTBK). The administrative services provided by BTBK ensure the survivability of the network. According to behavior trust degree of the communicating node, BTBK provides security mechanisms including pairwise key establishment, update and revocation dynamically, which does not need base sites or special nodes. The performances of WSNs, e.g. security, invulnerability, connection probability of nodes, less storage and communication overhead, can be substantially improved by using BTBK scheme. The scheme and its detailed performance evaluation are presented based on simulation.