Secure group communication in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In this paper we address the issues of forming secure multicast group within wireless sensor networks. We describe a protocol that establishes a secure multicast group, and distributes a group key by mutually authenticating a group of devices over an open insecure wireless channel. We choose a conference keying mechanism and extend it with symmetric authentication protocols and a key hierarchy on which group key could be distributed efficiently. We address two problems in this work. Firstly, the formation of secure groups in sensor network with a low communication complexity, secondly, provides an efficient solution to maintain such multicast group.