Title: Key management schemes in wireless sensor networks: a survey

Authors: R. Ezhilarasie; A. Umamakeswari; T. Renugadevi

Addresses: School of Computing, SASTRA University, Thanjavur, India ' School of Computing, SASTRA University, Thanjavur, India ' School of Computing, SASTRA University, Thanjavur, India

Abstract: Wireless sensor network (WSN) refers to a network consisting of sensor nodes or motes which are preloaded with software that primarily aims at the collection and safe transmission of various data obtained through the sensor arrays. In mission critical applications, there is an inherent need for incorporating security against node constraints environment. This paper substantiates in detail the various key management schemes (KMSs) which are classified based on communication patterns such as group keying, pair-wise and network wide mechanism. The overall aim of this paper is to conduct a comparative study of the existing schemes of KMS in WSNs on the basis of evaluation metrics such as key connectivity, scalability, efficiency, resilience and authentication. Key revocation is also discussed to arrive at a consensus about their usability in various scenarios and possibly highlight the tradeoffs possible in each method.

Keywords: wireless sensor networks; WSNs; key management; probabilistic; matrix scheme; group-based scheme; key connectivity; scalability; efficiency; resilience; authentication; key revocation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAIP.2015.073699

International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms, 2015 Vol.7 No.3/4, pp.222 - 239

Received: 06 Nov 2014
Accepted: 09 Feb 2015
Published online: 16 Dec 2015 *

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