An Efficient Post-Deployment Key Establishment Scheme for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

Establishing pair-wise keys in wireless sensor networks is a challenging task due to the hostile environment and limited resources in sensor nodes. Many key management schemes have been proposed for sensor networks. However, most existing schemes are designed for homogeneous sensor networks where all of the nodes have the same or similar capabilities. Research has shown that better performance can be achieved by forming a heterogeneous sensor network. In this paper, we present an efficient post-deployment key management scheme designed for heterogeneous sensor networks. The scheme does not assume any prior knowledge about sensor deployment and location. Our scheme takes advantage of a few powerful high-end sensor nodes and achieves efficient and effective key establishment in a sensor network. The performance evaluation shows efficiency and effectiveness measures for our scheme.