A Key Management Scheme Based On Variable Transmission Range In Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor network is a kind of distributed wireless network which consists of a large number of sensor nodes. To achieve the communication security in sensor network, it's vital to establish pair-wise key between sensor nodes. However, due to the limited hardware capabilities of sensor nodes, mature security schemes cannot be directly applied to wireless sensor network, for this reason, lots of efforts need to be spent on security issues of wireless sensor network.In this paper, we propose a new key management scheme KMVTR based on variable transmission range of sensor nodes. This scheme uses group-based deployment method and two level key pre-distribution. There are certain senior nodes in every group, which can assist adjacent groups establishing pair-wise key in shared-key discovery by changing communication range.To make the KMVTR scheme be applied in sensor networks without powerful senior nodes which have wide transmission range, we modified the KMVTR scheme and obtainedμKMVTR scheme. InμKMVTR, we analyzed how to determine the number of kind A nodes in a group and the largest range of sensor nodes to achieve high connect probability. The theoretical analysis and experimental result showed the hexagonal deployment method needs less kind A nodes and smaller communication range than grid deployment method inμKMVTR scheme.Compared with other methods, KMVTR has several advantages such as providing perfect resilience against node capture, supporting larger network size, effective resilience against duplicated nodes attack, and doesn't have to know the expected locations of sensor nodes in key pre-distributed phase. The communication cost are also acceptable in wireless sensor network.