Key infection and evolution for sensor networks

To tackle key management in sensor networks,we borrow concepts from natural biological systems to handle this problem,and a lightweight key management scheme which is applicable to smart dust sensor networks,key infection and evolutionm,is proposed.We first propose a probability model to analyze the security of the key infection protocol,and then introduce a new variant of the key infection protocol,Group based Key Infection,to improve its security performance.By combining key infection with a lightweight key pre-distribution scheme,a more secure key distribution scheme,Group based Key Infection with Key Pre-distribution,is proposed.To thwart on-going cryptanalytic attacks,a key evolution scheme with key synchronization is proposed to continuously renew shared keys.Analytical results show that the proposed scheme presents a viable trade-off between security and resource consumption for smart dust sensor networks.