Research On Key Management For Wireless Sensor Networks

Recently wireless sensor networks have attracted much attention due to its great potential to be used in various applications. Compared to cable networks, wireless sensor networks can virtually work in more environments and sensors can be deployed in a controlled or uncontrolled environment. Many factors, such as open communication, limited resources, large-scale network, unknown topology and physical attack with a high probability make secure communication for wireless sensor networks become a great challenge. Key management is one of the key issues for wireless sensor networks. The main work in this paper is as follows:First, key management schemes are divided into multiple categories. They can be divided into distributed and structured key management schemes in the topology. In the former, the ability of each node is the same. For various reasons, it is not suitable for WSN. The latter has some nodes with strong capability and has been widely used in the WSN. In cryptography, compared to asymmetric mechanism, the symmetrical mechanism is more simple, less cost and more unsafe. The difference between static and dynamic key management scheme is whether key update after the nodes are deployed. Random key management scheme without calculation is simple and effective, but identified key management scheme is more targeted.Second, in this paper a ternary polynomial based key management (KMTP) scheme is proposed, which is effective in cluster based wireless sensor networks. Firstly, the base station will give each node one unique identifier to ensure the validity of the node. Then, algorithms of the inner-cluster and inter-cluster key pre-distribution based on the ternary polynomial of the same order is stated, which can ensure the value of the cracking threshold is bigger than the number of nodes of a cluster and all clusters separately. To assure the communication security, inter-cluster multi-hop routing mechanism based on constructing secure conjunct neighbor table. Finally, the updating parameter and the updating authentication number are introduced in rekeying phase.Finally, the proposed key management scheme for wireless sensor networks is used in smart grid. In particular, the Advanced Metering Infrastructure is selected as an application object, and key management system for AMI is proposed to further verify the feasibility and effectiveness of KMTP.