Key Pre-distribution Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks Using Combinatorial Design

Abstract

Considering Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) usage in sensitive applications, providing secure communication between the sensor nodes is of utmost importance. The key pre-distribution technique allows the sensor nodes to encrypt the messages employing the secret key to uphold the network security. Having limited computational powers and storage capacity are the constraints of sensor nodes. In this work, Combinatorial Design (CD) is employed to propose a deterministic scheme for key pre-distribution in WSNs wherein keyrings are generated from a given keypool. The network region is divided into many same-sized cells with regular sensor nodes and cell leaders deployed in each cell. The cell leaders possess higher resource and computational capabilities than the regular sensor nodes and thus are used for communication between cells. Whenever the regular sensor nodes need to establish communication links with other regular sensor nodes in the same cell, they can do so directly using the common secret key. The key pre-distribution scheme proposed for cell leaders is highly scalable. A detailed study of the scalability, the resiliency of the proposed scheme is also presented. The resiliency accomplished is comparable to other existing schemes. Still, at the same time, the given scheme provides full connectivity, high scalability without a significant increase in the storage overhead of the sensor nodes. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.