Highly Secure Key Predistribution Using Affine Planes and Reed Muller Codes in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) consist of low powered and resource constrained sensor nodes which are left unattended for long duration of time. Hence it is very challenging to design and implement cost effective security protocols for such networks. Thus symmetric key cryptographic techniques are preferred over public key techniques for communication in such scenarios. Prior to deployment, keys are usually predistributed into the nodes and this problem has been well studied. Highlighting that connectivity and communication are two separate aspects of a WSN, we propose a secure connectivity model using Reed Muller codes. The model is then utilized to securely establish communication keys and exchange messages in a WSN designed on the basis of a scheme that uses affine planes for key predistribution. By the introduction of connectivity model, the node identifiers (ids) are converted from public to private information to each node. These private node ids can be used to generate new communication keys from old ones by applying cryptographic hash functions. Novel combination of these ideas yields highly resilient communication model with full connectivity between nodes.