Research Article
Energy Cost of Cryptographic Session Key Establishment in a Wireless Sensor Network
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/ChinaCom.2011.6158174, author={Cheng Li and Xueying Zhang and Howard Heys}, title={Energy Cost of Cryptographic Session Key Establishment in a Wireless Sensor Network}, proceedings={6th International ICST Conference on Communications and Networking in China}, publisher={IEEE}, proceedings_a={CHINACOM}, year={2012}, month={3}, keywords={wireless sensor networks security encryption key establishment}, doi={10.1109/ChinaCom.2011.6158174} }- Cheng Li
Xueying Zhang
Howard Heys
Year: 2012
Energy Cost of Cryptographic Session Key Establishment in a Wireless Sensor Network
CHINACOM
IEEE
DOI: 10.1109/ChinaCom.2011.6158174
Abstract
This paper presents an energy cost analysis for session key establishment in a wireless sensor network (WSN). A session key is used to encrypt the data between two nodes and it should be established before the start of their secure data communication. In a WSN, the session key establishment is an important process in constructing a secure data communication and is preferably undertaken to minimize the energy drain on the energy-constrained sensor node. In our study, we examine the energy cost of session key establishment using a symmetric-key based protocol in a WSN. We make use of an energy consumption model for the sensor node that considers the communication cost and computational cost for implementing the protocol on a microcontroller-based sensor node. In particular, we explore the effects of session key establishment to the overall energy cost in a sensor node, especially considering the frequency of key establishment and the quality of communication channel.