The Optimum Design of Location-Dependent Key Management Protocol for a Multiple Sink WSN Using a Random Selected Cell Reporter

The use of wireless sensor networks for the purposes of border surveillance is a very hot topic at the moment. Such a network comprises large numbers of sensor nodes, sparsely located over a wide terrain, where the generated data are collected by multiple sinks located in secure head quarters. Due to its importance and criticality, data disseminated through such a network is vulnerable to outsider attacks. Therefore, a location-dependent key management scheme could be employed in order to provide security in terms of confidentiality and authenticity. This paper presents a novel location-dependent key management protocol for multiple sinks (LKMP-MS) whose design is based on a cell reporters scheme. In this protocol, the generated report regarding any event contains three security levels. In particular, the third level is implemented as an endorsement of the set of cell reporters allocated inside each cell. Accordingly, the generated event report is accepted by the sink. As a result, the adversary would have to compromise all endorsement nodes and all cell reporters selected by all sinks in order to generate a fake report inside a particular spot. This paper introduces a novel algorithm to implement the required revocation for both compromised nodes and cells in order to overcome the possible consequences of these entities being compromised. In order to evaluate and compare the LKMP-MS with recent schemes, a mathematical analysis is implemented and a simulation environment is built based on Contiki and MATLAB to validate the mathematical analyses. Finally, an extensive mathematical analysis is presented in order to calculate the optimum number of cell reporters that gives the highest level of security.