IbPaKdE: identity-based pairing free authenticated key and data exchange protocol for wireless sensor networks

This piece of work addresses the challenges, such as less computational complexity, energy efficient, low communication overhead, and low memory overhead for the design of a key distribution approach by combining identity-based cryptography (IBC) with symmetric key cryptography (SKC). The proposed identity-based pairing free authenticated key and data exchange protocol (IbPaKdE) avails advantages of both IBC and SKC. IbPaKdE supports pairing free key distribution i.e., prior communication for secret key establishment is not required. The proposed IbPaKdE uses IBC strategy for secure exchange of keys and SKC to provide security to the data to be transmitted. The on demand establishment of keys eliminates the permanent storage of important credentials in the sensor nodes. Simulation results of the proposed IbPaKdE approach is compared with that of hashed identity-based secure key and data exchange (HISKDE). The results show that the IbPaKdE incur better results compared to HISKDE in terms of the above challenges.