Improving pairwise key establishment using deployment knowledge and analyze its security level for sensor networks

In sensor networks, secure communication among sensor nodes requires secure links and consequently secure key establishment. Due to resource constraints, achieving such key establishment is non-trivial. Recently some random key pre-distribution techniques have been proposed to establish pair-wise keys. Pair-wise key establishment is a fundamental security service in sensor networks; it enables sensor nodes to communicate securely with each other using cryptographic techniques. Some of these approaches assume certain deployment knowledge prior to deployment and nodes are deployed in groups/bundles. The analysis shows that when certain deployment knowledge is available, the performance of existing key pre-distribution techniques can be improved significantly. The objective of this paper is to analyze and compare the security level of the different deployment knowledge based schemes.