Energy Efficient Rekeying Protocol for Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

Securing the information exchange between the network nodes is very important in wireless sensor and actor networks as actions taken by the actor nodes on the performance is dependent upon the sensed data. This paper proposes an energy-efficient rekeying protocol for WSANs named as energy-efficient hybrid key management protocol that assigns the key management responsibility to the actor nodes. The proposed protocol organizes network nodes into clusters and categorizes nodes into critical and non-critical nodes. It establishes unique pair-wise keys only for pairs of active neighboring sensor nodes after analysis of the network traffic and minimizes the storage overhead. The protocol is distributed and is able to handle compromise of both critical and non-critical nodes. Simulation results show that the technique is highly energy-efficient and enhances the network lifetime.