Group-based key predistribution for wireless sensor networks

ABSTRACT

Many key predistribution techniques have been developed recently to establish pairwise keys between sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks. To further improve these schemes, researchers have also proposed to take advantage of the sensors' expected locations and discovered locations to help the predistribution of the keying materials. However, in many cases, it is very difficult to deploy sensor nodes at their expected locations or guarantee the correct location discovery at sensor nodes in hostile environments. In this article, a group-based deployment model is developed to improve key predistribution. In this model, sensor nodes are only required to be deployed in groups. The critical observation in the article is that the sensor nodes in the same group are usually close to each other after deployment. This deployment model is practical; it greatly simplifies the deployment of sensor nodes, while still providing an opportunity to improve key predistribution. Specifically, the article presents a novel framework for improving key predistribution using the group-based deployment knowledge. This framework does not require the knowledge of the sensors' expected or discovered locations and is thus suitable for applications where it is difficult to deploy the sensor nodes at their expected locations or correctly estimate the sensors' locations after deployment. To seek practical key predistribution schemes, the article presents two efficient instantiations of this framework, a hash key-based scheme and a polynomial-based scheme. The evaluation shows that these two schemes are efficient and effective for pairwise key establishment in sensor networks; they can achieve much better performance than the previous key predistribution schemes when the sensor nodes are deployed in groups.

REFERENCES

• 1: I. F. Akyildiz , W. Su , Y. Sankarasubramaniam , E. Cayirci, Wireless sensor networks: a survey, Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking, v.38 n.4, p.393-422, 15 March 2002 [doi>10.1016/S1389-1286(01)00302-4]
• 2: Ross Anderson , Haowen Chan , Adrian Perrig, Key Infection: Smart Trust for Smart Dust, Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, p.206-215, October 05-08, 2004
• 3: Stefano Basagni , Kris Herrin , Danilo Bruschi , Emilia Rosti, Secure pebblenets, Proceedings of the 2nd ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing, October 04-05, 2001, Long Beach, CA, USA [doi>10.1145/501436.501438]
• 4: Carlo Blundo , Alfredo De Santis , Amir Herzberg , Shay Kutten , Ugo Vaccaro , Moti Yung, Perfectly-Secure Key Distribution for Dynamic Conferences, Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Cryptology Conference on Advances in Cryptology, p.471-486, August 16-20, 1992
• 5: Capkun, S. and Hubaux, J. 2005. Secure positioning of wireless devices with application to sensor networks. In Proceedings of IEEE InfoCom'05.
• 6: Carman, D., Kruus, P., and Matt, B. J. 2000. Constrains and approaches for distributed sensor network security. Tech. rep. 00-010. NAI Labs, Glenwood, MD.
• 7: Chan, H. and Perrig, A. 2005. PIKE: Peer intermediaries for key establishment in sensor networks. In Proceedings of IEEE Infocom.
• 8: Haowen Chan , Adrian Perrig , Dawn Song, Random Key Predistribution Schemes for Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, p.197, May 11-14, 2003
• 9: Jing Deng , Richard Han , Shivakant Mishra, Security support for in-network processing in Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 31, 2003, Fairfax, Virginia [doi>10.1145/986858.986870]
• 10: Du, W., Deng, J., Han, Y. S., Chen, S., and Varshney, P. 2004. A key management scheme for wireless sensor networks using deployment knowledge. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM'04.
• 11: Wenliang Du , Jing Deng , Yunghsiang S. Han , Pramod K. Varshney, A pairwise key pre-distribution scheme for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, October 27-30, 2003, Washington D.C., USA [doi>10.1145/948109.948118]
• 12: Laurent Eschenauer , Virgil D. Gligor, A key-management scheme for distributed sensor networks, Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, November 18-22, 2002, Washington, DC, USA [doi>10.1145/586110.586117]
• 13: David Gay , Philip Levis , Robert von Behren , Matt Welsh , Eric Brewer , David Culler, The nesC language: A holistic approach to networked embedded systems, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2003 conference on Programming language design and implementation, June 09-11, 2003, San Diego, California, USA
• 14: Hartung, C., Balasalle, J., and Han, R. 2005. Node compromise in sensor networks: The need for secure systems. Tech. Rep. CU-CS-990-05. University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO.
• 15: Jason Hill , Robert Szewczyk , Alec Woo , Seth Hollar , David Culler , Kristofer Pister, System architecture directions for networked sensors, Proceedings of the ninth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, p.93-104, November 2000, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
• 16: Hu, L. and Evans, D. 2003. Secure aggregation for wireless networks. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Security and Assurance in ad hoc Networks.
• 17: Dijiang Huang , Manish Mehta , Deep Medhi , Lein Harn, Location-aware key management scheme for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 25-25, 2004, Washington DC, USA [doi>10.1145/1029102.1029110]
• 18: Joengmin Hwang , Yongdae Kim, Revisiting random key pre-distribution schemes for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 25-25, 2004, Washington DC, USA [doi>10.1145/1029102.1029111]
• 19: Karlof, C. and Wagner, D. 2003. Secure routing in wireless sensor networks: Attacks and countermeasures. In Proceedings of the 1st IEEE International Workshop on Sensor Network Protocols and Applications.
• 20: Loukas Lazos , Radha Poovendran , Srdjan Čapkun, ROPE: robust position estimation in wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on Information processing in sensor networks, April 24-27, 2005, Los Angeles, California
• 21: Loukas Lazos , Radha Poovendran, SeRLoc: secure range-independent localization for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 3rd ACM workshop on Wireless security, October 01-01, 2004, Philadelphia, PA, USA [doi>10.1145/1023646.1023650]
• 22: Zang Li , Wade Trappe , Yanyong Zhang , Badri Nath, Robust statistical methods for securing wireless localization in sensor networks, Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on Information processing in sensor networks, April 24-27, 2005, Los Angeles, California
• 23: Donggang Liu , Peng Ning, Establishing pairwise keys in distributed sensor networks, Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, October 27-30, 2003, Washington D.C., USA [doi>10.1145/948109.948119]
• 24: Donggang Liu , Peng Ning, Location-based pairwise key establishments for static sensor networks, Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 31, 2003, Fairfax, Virginia [doi>10.1145/986858.986869]
• 25: Donggang Liu , Peng Ning, Improving key predistribution with deployment knowledge in static sensor networks, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), v.1 n.2, p.204-239, November 2005 [doi>10.1145/1105688.1105691]
• 26: Donggang Liu , Peng Ning , Wenliang Kevin Du, Attack-resistant location estimation in sensor networks, Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on Information processing in sensor networks, April 24-27, 2005, Los Angeles, California
• 27: Niculescu, D. and Nath, B. 2001. Ad hoc positioning system (APS). In Proceedings of IEEE GLOBECOM '01.
• 28: Adrian Perrig , Robert Szewczyk , Victor Wen , David Culler , J. D. Tygar, SPINS: security protocols for sensor networks, Proceedings of the 7th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking, p.189-199, July 2001, Rome, Italy [doi>10.1145/381677.381696]
• 29: Roberto Di Pietro , Luigi V. Mancini , Alessandro Mei, Random key-assignment for secure Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Security of ad hoc and sensor networks, October 31, 2003, Fairfax, Virginia [doi>10.1145/986858.986868]
• 30: Bartosz Przydatek , Dawn Song , Adrian Perrig, SIA: secure information aggregation in sensor networks, Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems, November 05-07, 2003, Los Angeles, California, USA [doi>10.1145/958491.958521]
• 31: Ray, S., Ungrangsi, R., Pellegrini, F. D., Trachtenberg, A., and Starobinski, D. 2003. Robust location detection in emergency sensor networks. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2003.
• 32: Anthony D. Wood , John A. Stankovic, Denial of Service in Sensor Networks, Computer, v.35 n.10, p.54-62, October 2002 [doi>10.1109/MC.2002.1039518]
• 33: Zhen Yu , Yong Guan, A key pre-distribution scheme using deployment knowledge for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on Information processing in sensor networks, April 24-27, 2005, Los Angeles, California
• 34: Sencun Zhu , Sanjeev Setia , Sushil Jajodia, LEAP: efficient security mechanisms for large-scale distributed sensor networks, Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, October 27-30, 2003, Washington D.C., USA [doi>10.1145/948109.948120]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.0 General
          Subjects: Security and protection (e.g., firewalls)

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Wireless communication

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Security

Keywords:
Sensor networks, group-based deployment, key predistribution, pairwise key establishment, security