Distance-based key management in hierarchical wireless sensor network

The key management is the most important way to protect the communication in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In this paper, we present a Distance-based Key Management (DKM) which can efficiently enhance the security and survivability in the hierarchical WSNs. Different from previous works, we generate the key system as well as the cluster formation. And the DKM distributes keys based on distance (hop counts), which not only localizes the key things but also has no overhead. The DKM can protect the network from the compromised nodes by reducing the high probability of the common keys. The security analysis can effectively prevent several attacks.