Energy-Aware Robust Key Management Technique for Dynamic Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Security of communications over WSN is very important. Unlike their wired counterparts, WSNs throws many challenges apart from resource constrained nature such as open network architecture, highly dynamic network topology. Therefore an energy-aware scheme is required to protect communications. There are many key distribution schemes for WSN are existed in the literature but most of them are static in nature. In this paper we explore a new key distribution scheme for dynamic WSNs. In such network where the nodes are dynamic in nature and nodes have mobility, it is essential to have a mechanism for key updating. This is achieved using a self-organizing binary tree known as AVL tree. This data structure is capable of adapting to the dynamic situations of WSN and updates the key values in real time. We proposed algorithms to achieve this. We also built a prototype application that demonstrates the application of the scheme for secure video distribution in a network. Our empirical results reveal that the proposed scheme is energy efficient and secure. Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Key Management, Energy Efficiency, AVL tree.