Key Establishment Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper describes the design, prototype implementation and deployment of a key management protocol for sensor networks. In order to exchange protected messages between sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network, secret shared cryptographic keys must be established between the nodes of the network. Several key management schemes have been proposed in the literature, but these schemes are not suitable for real-life deployment. In this paper, we approach the problems of key management protocol differently from other reported results. We first analyzed functionality, feasibility and flexibility of the current key management protocols. Then, we introduce the concept of the Trusted Base Station as the foundation of our new protocol. The results of our implementation and deployment in a real WSN environment show that our theoretical results and claims are supported by the results of practical tests and measurements of operational efficiency.