A Key Management Scheme for Wireless Sensor Network using Received Signal Strength Indicator

In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) one of the major challenging security issue is the management of keys. Key management is a major categorisation and includes several important elements namely, key updating, key distribution and most importantly key generation. Most of the physically deployed WSN has been deployed with pre distributed random keys which are seldom updated. This proves a challenge to the underlying encryption algorithm which gets subjected to cryptanalysis and thus loses its viability. The connectivity provided in WSN contradicts the network security principle of resilience and research community has not been able to provide viable alternatives to key updating. To address this problem a Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Link Quality Indicator (LQI) based random key management scheme is proposed for heterogeneous WSN is proposed. Deployment details are pre-requisitely known and a RSSI-LQI based random key distribution and key updating mechanism is designed. The simulation and analysis of this mechanism achieves improved security and supports scalability. This mechanism also assures key network security features of key updating without affecting the major concerns of resilience and connectivity at the network security level.