An efficient key management based on dynamic generation of polynomials for heterogeneous sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are commonly used in many applications now. According to the capability of sensor nodes, there are two types of WSN: homogeneous sensor networks and heterogeneous sensor network (HSN). Large-scale homogeneous sensor networks require high computation overhead, communication overhead and large memory storage. To achieve better performance and scalability, large-scale sensor networks are increasingly preferred to adopt heterogeneous designs. We describe an efficient key management based on dynamic generation of polynomials for heterogeneous sensor networks which fully utilized the heterogeneity of sensor nodes. The design of the proposed scheme is motivated by how to prolong the lifetime of HSN and support large-scale HSN. In order to prolong the lifetime of HSN, the sensor nodes which are more capable take charge of more computation overhead, communication overhead and memory storage than others. The scheme can support large-scale HSN because the polynomials which are used to compute the cluster keys are dynamically generated after deployment. Moreover, the renewal of keys is simple and convenient. The paper also reports the implementation and the performance of the proposed scheme on OMNET++.