An Authenticated Key Management Scheme for Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

Summary. Key Management is a critical security service in wireless sensor net-works (WSNs). It is an essential cryptographic primitive upon which other security primitives are built. The most critical security requirements in WSNs include au-thentication and confidentiality. These security requirements can be provided by a key management but it is difficult due to the ad hoc nature, intermittent connec-tivity, and resource limitations of the sensor networks. In this paper we propose an authenticated key management (AKM) scheme for hierarchical networks based on the random key pre-distribution. Further, a secure cluster formation algorithm is proposed. The base station periodically refreshes the network key, which provides the following: a) the authenticated network communication, and b) a global and continuous authentication of each network entity. Multiple level of encryption is provided by using two keys: 1) a pair-wise shared key between nodes, and 2) a net-work key. The AKM scheme is more resilient to node capture as compared to other random key pre-distribution schemes. The proposed key management scheme can be applied for different routing and energy efficient data dissemination techniques for sensor networks