A PRC based key management method for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are often deployed in hostile and unattended environments. Then two important problems for key management are presented. First, how to establish the encryption keys among sensor nodes to ensure the security of the network applications. Second, how to avoid the key being obtained especially the sensor be captured. In this paper, we proposed a novel key management method based on PRC (Prime Residue Class) for the wireless sensor networks in the hostile environments. By using this method, we can establish reliable communication keys between sensor nodes and avoid the original key being obtained. Moreover, this method can save the energy during the key establishing process. We designed some experiment to evaluate the security and performance of this method, and the experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve satisfying results.