A Level-based Key Management for both In-Network Processing and Mobility in WSNs

Abstract

We present a new infrastructure to support secure and energy-efficient multicast communication for both in-network processing and mobility in WSNs. A level-based hierarchy is used for the design. It subdivides the group routing tree into level and branches. On top of it, the secure packet forward (SPF) scheme and re-keying algorithm are implemented. The secure packet forward (SPF) mechanism efficiently detects and mitigates the Byzantine behavior as avoiding interference between data aggregation and message encryption. The re-keying algorithm effectively handles the impact of mobility on key establishment while minimizing the number of messages to be exchanged. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can derive the benefits of in-network processing with reasonable routing overhead minimizing the effects of faulty nodes. Moreover, it achieves dramatically lower overhead than traditional secure multicast protocols for mobility management.