A Novel Cluster-based Key Management Scheme to Improve Scalability in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are mobile ad-hoc networks in which sensors have constraint resource and communication. Providing data and connection security needs appropriate encryption protocols. Key management is a basic security mechanism for wireless sensor networks. While several key management schemes have been proposed for sensor networks, it is still a challenging issue in these networks. Secure key management in wireless networks such as wireless sensor networks is one of the issues attracting researchers’ attention in terms of energy consumption and processing load on sensor nodes, as well as security problems. Due to storage limit in these networks, scalability is one of the most important components discussed in key management. In this paper, we proposed a scalable key management scheme based on clustering for wireless sensor networks, which is consists of two setup and maintenance phases and supports node mobility. The results show that our proposed solution improves the network’s scalability, while providing high secure connection and total improved efficiency. Moreover, our proposed scheme has lower computational overhead, energy consumption and delay compared to modern schemes.