Analysis of Secure Routing Protocol for Cluster-Based Wireless Sensor Networks Using Group Key Management

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a technology of various uses from monitoring surrounding environment to collecting data. Because WSNs operate with limited resources of sensor nodes, its life is extended by cluster-based routing methods. Wireless sensor networks routing protocols always neglect security problem at the designing step, while plenty of solutions of this problem exist, one of which is using key management. Most of them were designed for flat wireless sensor networks, which is not fit for cluster-based wireless sensor networks (e.g. LEACH). In this paper, we investigate adding security to cluster-based routing protocols for wireless sensor networks uses improved Random Pair-wise Keys (RPK) scheme, an optimized security scheme that relys on symmetric-key methods; is lightweight and preserves the core of the original LEACH called R LEACH. WSNs quite vulnerable and their sensor nodes have very limited communication and computing capacities and a small memory space. For these reasons, it is difficult to apply the established public key encryption technology. Accordingly, a large number of sensor nodes should be tolerable to errors and failures, and it is essential to achieve effective management and reinforced security functions through autonomous network construction. The cluster-based routing protocol proposed in this study showed energy-efficient key management by establishing a common shared key through the key of key ring or through authentication by a reliable institution.