5th International ICST Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems

Research Article

A Security Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks Utilizing a Unique Session Key

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/BROADNETS.2008.4769130,
        author={Yong Wang and Byrav Ramamurthy and Yuyan Xue and Xukai Zou},
        title={A Security Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks Utilizing a Unique Session Key},
        proceedings={5th International ICST Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={BROADNETS},
        year={2010},
        month={5},
        keywords={Wireless sensor networks key management},
        doi={10.1109/BROADNETS.2008.4769130}
    }
    
  • Yong Wang
    Byrav Ramamurthy
    Yuyan Xue
    Xukai Zou
    Year: 2010
    A Security Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks Utilizing a Unique Session Key
    BROADNETS
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/BROADNETS.2008.4769130
Yong Wang1,*, Byrav Ramamurthy1,*, Yuyan Xue1,*, Xukai Zou2,*
  • 1: Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588 USA
  • 2: Department of Computer and Information Science Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN 46202 USA
*Contact email: ywang@cse.unl.edu, byrav@cse.unl.edu, yxue@cse.unl.edu, xkzou@cs.iupui.edu

Abstract

Key management is a core mechanism to ensure the security of applications and network services in wireless sensor networks. It includes two aspects: key distribution and key revocation. Many key management protocols have been specifically designed for wireless sensor networks. However, most of the key management protocols focus on the establishment of the required keys or the removal of the compromised keys. The design of these key management protocols does not consider the support of higher level security applications. When the applications are integrated later in sensor networks, new mechanisms must be designed. In this paper, we propose a security framework, uKeying, for wireless sensor networks. This framework can be easily extended to support many security applications. It includes three components: a security mechanism to provide secrecy for communications in sensor networks, an efficient session key distribution scheme, and a centralized key revocation scheme. The proposed framework does not depend on a specific key distribution scheme and can be used to support many security applications, such as secure group communications. Our analysis shows that the framework is secure, efficient, and extensible. The simulation and results also reveal for the first time that a centralized key revocation scheme can also attain a high efficiency.