Key management technique for WSNs

In Wireless sensor networks (WSNs), many tiny sensor nodes communicate using wireless links and collaborate with each other. The data collected by each of the nodes is communicated towards the gateway node after carrying out aggregation of the data by different nodes. It is necessary to secure the data collected by the WSN nodes while they communicate among themselves using multi hop wireless links. To meet this objective it is required to make use of energy efficient cryptographic algorithms so that the same can be ported over the resource constrained nodes. It is needed to create trust initially among the WSN nodes while using any of the cryptographic algorithms. Towards this, a key management technique needs to be made use of. Due to the resource constrained nature of the WSN nodes and the remote deployment of the nodes, an implementation of conventional key management techniques is infeasible. This work proposes a key management technique, with its reduced resource overheads, which is highly suited to be used in hierarchical WSN applications. Both Identity based key management (IBK) and probabilistic key pre-distribution schemes are made use of at different hierarchical levels. The proposed key management technique has been implemented using IRIS WSN nodes. A comparison of resource overheads has also been carried out.