Blockchain-based Secure Key Distribution for WSNs in Soil Monitoring

With the rapid development of society and economy, soil issues have been emphasized. As the front-end of data collection, sensor networks are used in various soil monitoring applications. However, current wireless sensor networks face the difficulty of sensor authentication when forming clusters, and lack effective authentication methods and efficient and secure key distribution mechanisms. To address these issues, this paper proposes a blockchain-based polynomial key distribution scheme (PCD). During the initialization process, the identification information of the sensor is uploaded into the blockchain to ensure the consistency of the authentication information and provide security for the authentication process. The polynomial-based distribution mechanism further improves the efficiency of cluster key distribution. Experimental analysis and comparison prove that our construction is efficient and practical.