Key Management in Wireless Sensor Networks - A Review

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are always prone to security threats and they do have a wide range of applications. Key management is a serious issue while communications through wireless sensor networks take place. Traditional network security methods are not up to the mark due to limited resources. Several key management has been proposed and few of which have been summarized below. The basic method used in homogeneous sensor networks used symmetric keys which then progressed to the use of asymmetric keys. Due to the energy constraints, the concept of heterogeneous wireless sensor networks with high and low energy sensors was developed. A combination of symmetric and asymmetric keys were tried and obtained better results like security, scalability and connectivity.