Key Management Mechanism In Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

Sensor networks usually consist of a large number of sensor nodes. Sensor networks are being deployed for a wide variety of applications, including military sensing and detecting, environment monitoring, patient monitoring and tracking, smart environments, etc. In sensor networks security, an important challenge is how to design the key management protocols so as to establish the secure communications among sensor nodes.Key management mechanism includes key management framework, key management model and key management protocol in sensor networks. Key management framework is the architecture of key management mechanism, and key management model describes some guidance to design secure key protocols. Key management protocol is the basic key management module, which construct the basis for key management and give the measure to achieve a secure connection in sensor networks.The definition of heterogeneous nodes and heterogeneous networks in the heterogeneous sensor networks (HSN) are proposed, and the heterogeneous factors are focused in HSN. This study describes the physical factors and key management protocols and proposes a multi-dimensional framework for key management in HSN, which provides structural support for further study of key management mechanism. The analysis of framework simulation shows the framework is correct and effective for the key management mechanism.According to the actual environment of the network, sensor networks can be divided into friendly sensor networks and hostile sensor networks. In the friendly sensor networks, as the sensor nodes are deployed in safe and controlled areas, a static key management model is enough to guarantee the security of networks. Static key management model is fit for friendly environment. In the hostile sensor networks, as the sensor nodes are deployed in dangerous and uncontrolled areas, where the active and complex attacks are exist, dynamic key management protocol is necessary to protect against sophisticated attacks. After constructing the pair-wise key sub-model and others, the static and dynamic key management models are extended from stochastic Petri nets.