A permutation-based multi-polynomial scheme for pairwise key establishment in sensor networks

The wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are normally operated in unattended, harsh, or hostile environment. Some strategies have been proposed to establish pairwise keys to protect the sensitive data and the sensor readings, but most existing schemes either suffer the large-scale node capture attacks, or cannot provide full and direct key establishment. In this paper, we present a permutation-based multi-polynomial scheme for pairwise key establishment in wireless sensor networks. This scheme is highly robust to the large-scale node capture attacks. Even after a large number of nodes have been compromised, the pairwise keys shared by non-compromised nodes remain secure. It also guarantees that any two nodes can directly establish a pairwise key without exposing any secret to other nodes. This full and direct key establishment features enable our scheme every adaptive to support node addition and mobility, which are particularly beneficial to the real-world applications. Our performance analysis also shows that the proposed scheme incurs low communication, storage, and computation overhead.