A Robust Pairwise Key Predistribution Scheme Resistant to Common Attacks for Wireless Sensor Networks

Security is very necessary for secure operations in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), especially in hostile environments. To achieve security, key agreement needs to be implemented efficiently among communicating nodes. Nonetheless, acquiring such key agreement in WSNs becomes extremely intricate due to resource constraints. Among approaches so far, key predistribution approach is considered as the most suitable solutions. Based on this investigation, in this paper, we propose a pairwise key predistribution scheme relying on sensor nodes’ unique authenticated identifications. The identification authenticity is obtained by making use of Merkle hash tree. Our scheme exhibits several attractive properties that are used to resist some common attacks in WSNs as shown in security analysis. We also conduct a detailed investigation of the performance of our scheme in terms of memory usage, communication overhead, and computational overhead.