Reducing Communication Overhead of Key Distribution Schemes for Wireless Sensor Networks

Establishing a secure communication link in a wireless sensor network is a challenging task due to resource limitation and wireless nature of transmission. A symmetric key distribution is a practical and efficient solution which has been studied extensively [4][5][6][7][9][11]. A secure communication link is established between sensors that hold common keys, which are discovered by each node broadcasting the key identifiers of its key ring. We make modifications to existing schemes to reduce communication overhead during the key discovery phase. This is achieved without weakening network connectivity or system resiliency against key compromise. We also introduce families of new deterministic key distribution schemes with low-communication overhead.