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Key Pre-distribution Scheme with Node Revocation for Wireless Sensor Networks
Junzhi Yan, Jianfeng Ma, Fenghua Li and Sang Jae Moon

Wireless sensor networks are often deployed in hostile environments. The low cost sensor nodes may be captured and the sensitive information such as communication keys stored in their memory may be compromised by the adversary. As a result, securing the communication against node capture is one of the most important design objectives. This paper proposes an efficient key pre-distribution scheme which aims to revoke the compromised sensor nodes with low overheads. Our scheme is based on a novel application of an a-ary logical key tree. Each internal vertex of the logical key tree is assigned a set of keys. Each sensor node is assigned to a leaf of the logical key tree, and keeps the key sets assigned to the vertices on the path from the leaf to the root. This scheme is flexible, scalable and simple to employ. Compared with existing schemes, our scheme can provide sufficient secrecy with low storage, communication and computational overheads.

Keywords: Group key management, revocation, key pre-distribution scheme, wireless sensor networks, logical key tree.

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