Self-healing group-wise key distribution schemes with time-limited node revocation for wireless sensor networks

In this article two novel group-wise key distribution schemes with time-limited node revocation are introduced for secure group communications in wireless sensor networks. The proposed key distribution schemes are based on two different hash chain structures, dual directional hash chain and hash binary tree. Their salient security properties include self-healing rekeying message distribution, which features a periodic one-way rekeying function with efficient tolerance for lost rekeying messages; and time-limited dynamic node attachment and detachment. Security evaluation shows that the proposed key distribution schemes generally satisfy the requirement of group communications in WSNs with lightweight communication and computation overhead, and are robust under poor communication channel quality.