An Efficient Key Agreement Scheme for Wireless sensor Networks Using Third Parties
International Journal of Ad hoc, Sensor & Ubiquitous Computing (IJASUC), 4 (4):
15 (August 2013)DOI: 10.5121/ijasuc.2013.4401
Abstract
This paper contributes to the challenging field of security for wireless sensor networks by introducing a
keyagreement scheme in which sensor nodes create secure radio connections with their neighbours
depending on the aidof third parties. These third parties are responsible only for the pair-wise key
establishment among sensor nodes,so they do not observe the physical phenomenon nor route data packets
to other nodes. The proposed methodis explained here with respect to four important issues: how secret
shares are distributed, how local neighboursare discovered, how legitimate third parties are verified, and
how secure channels are established. Moreover, theperformance of the scheme is analyzed with regards to
five metrics: local connectivity, resistance to node capture,memory usage, communication overhead, and
computational burden.Our scheme not only secures the transmissionchannels of nodes but also guarantees
high local connectivity of the sensor network, low usage of memory resources,perfect network resilience
against node capture, and complete prevention against impersonation attacks. As it isdemonstrated in this
paper, using a number of third parties equals to 10% of the total number of sensor nodes inthe area of
interest, the proposed method can achieve at least 99.42% local connectivity with a very low usage
ofavailable storage resources (less than 385 bits on each sensor node).
