Self-Healing Sensor Network Key Distribution Scheme for Secure Communication
Jaykumar Shantilal Patel, Kumar Shantilal · 2013
Wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of a large number of small, low cost sensor nodes which have limited computing and energy resources. As the wireless medium is characterized by its lousy nature, reliable communication is difficult to assume in the key distribution schemes. Therefore, self-healing is a good property for key distribution in wireless applications. How to establish secure session keys is one of the central tasks for wireless sensor network communications. General Key distribution schemes for traditional computer networks could not be directly shifted to wireless sensor network environments. A self-healing key distribution scheme enables a large group of sensor nodes to establish a session key dynamically over an unreliable, or lousy wireless network. The main idea of self-healing key distribution scheme is that users are capable to recover lost session keys on their own, without requesting additional transmission from the group manager that saves the additional communication cost over the network and reduces the network traffic, even if during a certain session some broadcast messages are lost due to network faults.