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Towards A Theoretically Bounded Path Key Establishment Mechanism in Wireless Sensor Networks

Authors:
Aishwarya Mishra
Tibor Gyires
Yongning Tang

Keywords: sensor networks, random key predistribution, graph diameter, random graph, theoretical bound, path key establishment

Abstract:
Random Key Pre-distribution Scheme (RKPS) guarantees any pair of neighboring nodes in a Wireless sensor network (WSN) can build a secure connection either directly or through a path key establishment mechanism (PKEM). For any pair of neighboring sensor nodes without a direct secure connection due to unfound common key, a node can resort to PKEM to flood a keyrequest in the connected graph to reachthe neighboring node and build a secure connection thereafter. One remaining challenge in PKEM is to find an optimal transmission radius for flooding. Commonly used empirically or probabilistically bounded flooding mechanisms may cause high power consumption on sensor nodes and also easily be exploited to launch power exhaustion Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to sabotage a WSN. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by first theoretically analyzing the upper bound of diameter in Erd˝os-R´enyi (ER) random graph theory, and then verifying the performance of theoretical bounded PKEM using simulations. The performance evaluation shows both the correctness and effectiveness of our proposed theoretically bounded path key establishment mechanism.

Pages: 147 to 152

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2012

Publication date: February 29, 2012

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4413

ISBN: 978-1-61208-183-0

Location: Saint Gilles, Reunion

Dates: from February 29, 2012 to March 5, 2012