An efficient partial key pre-distribution scheme for chain oriented sensor networks

Resource-constraint nature of wireless sensor network (WSN) makes the security issue certainly a big challenge. An efficient key management scheme is the pre-requisite to ensure security in WSN. In this paper we present a secured key management protocol (SecCOSEN) adopted on COSEN, a chain oriented sensor network, which is used for periodic data collection. SecCOSEN uses partial key pre-distribution and symmetric cryptography techniques. SecCOSEN shows high resilience to different security attacks. The protocol outperforms other random key pre-distribution protocols in the sense that it requires lower space, lower communication overhead and offers very high session key candidates.