Research On The Key Management Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)

Wireless sensor network (WSN), which integrates the technologies of sensor, micro-electro-mechanism system (MEMS), wireless and distributed computing, is well worthy of research.We give a description of the of wireless sensor networks, the configuration of sensor nodes and the difference between wireless sensor networks and traditional networks. Also, we analyze the security threats, security goals and a trust model of this specific network environment. This thesis emphasizes on the issue of key management. We give a detailed introduction to the evaluation of key management under the environment of wireless sensor networks and several key distribution schemes, including KDC-based key distribution scheme, distribution scheme based on public key cryptography, and key pre-distribution schemes based on random probability. Then we summarize several classic protocols of key distribution, present the ideas behind them, and analyze the performance of these protocols. Finally, this thesis introduces methods of group key management for extremely large-scale network, which can enlarge the maximum supportable network size. We analyze a simple group key management scheme and give some improvements. Then, some routing protocols of wireless sensor network whose applications are restricted or systems are not energy-efficient thus lifetime is short are analyzed. To achieve better system performance the author presents a new protocol-Large scale Low energy sensor Network protocol. In new protocol, nodes are organized into clusters. Sensed data which is compressed and fused by each cluster head is sent to base station through several sensor nodes. New protocol includes a new distributed cluster formation technique that enables self-organization of large numbers of nodes, algorithms for adapting clusters and rotating cluster head positions to evenly distribute the energy load among all the nodes, and techniques to communicate information by the lowest energy routes.An important authentication protocol, mainly for World Wide Web (Web for short) security is the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol (SSL). We give our understandings of the SSL protocol and experiences in using OpenSSL Toolkit. We provide an overview level explain on the messages exchanged in the handshake protocol, aiming to understand how to implement the services of confidentiality, authentication and integrity in communications. A programming framework for implementing SSL protocol using OpenSSL Toolkit is given, while some problems arising from the implementation process and solutions to them are presented.