Key management schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks: A survey

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of number of distributed autonomous sensors spatially, that has many applications. These are often used in potentially adverse as well as in hostile environment. Hence security is an important factor during communication. There are three critical issues for wireless sensor networks such as network lifetime, saving energy and security. A sensor node has limited battery power so need effective key distribution and management mechanism for secure communication. Enormous key distribution and management mechanism have been proposed in research literatures. Here, we provide a survey of various key management schemes in WSNs and made an extensive study to categorize available key management techniques and analyze the possible network security on them.