Performance Analysis of Pair-Wise Key Establishment Protocols for Sensor Networks

Public-key cryptography protocols provide more scalability and security than symmetric-key protocols. It is assumed that public-key cryptography pair-wise key establishment protocols are not suitable for wireless sensor networks due to its high energy cost. This paper reports on the results of performance comparison of three typical pair-wise key establishment schemes that cover these protocols: SPINS, random key pre-distribution protocol and our public-key scheme, the former two protocols are based on symmetric-key cryptography. Our performance analysis shows that, public-key cryptography is suitable for modern wireless sensor networks if we carefully choose public-key algorithm, such as ECC-160. The analysis results are useful at key establishment protocol design in future.