An Efficient Key Distribution Scheme for Establishing Pairwise Keys with a Mobile Sink in Distributed Sensor Networks

Security services such as authentication and pair-wise key establishment are critical in sensor networks. They enable sensor nodes to communicate securely with each other using cryptographic techniques. In this paper, we propose a novel key predistribution scheme that enables a mobile sink to establish a secure data communication link with any sensor nodes on the fly. The proposed scheme is based on the polynomial pool-based key pre-distribution scheme and the scheme in [7]. The security analysis in this paper indicates that for a given node density of d sensors within the communication range of the mobile sink and with certain probabilities q and p, our scheme assures, with high probability, that any sensor node can establish a pair-wise key with the mobile sink. It remains perfectly secure up to the capture of a certain fraction of sensor nodes.