A design of optimal key management scheme for secure and survivable wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we investigate optimal key management design for secure and survivable heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (HWSNs). In particular, we formulate the key management problem as a multi-objective optimization problem, in which the cost of the sensor network, and the security and survivability metrics of the sensor network are taken into account. To solve the multi-objective optimization model, we develop a genetic algorithm (GA)based approach that can efficiently obtain near-optimal solutions. We show the performance of our scheme through extensive numerical results. With a small amount of powerful sensor nodes in HWSN, we can balance the cost of the sensor network and the resilience of the sensor network with the required security constraint in different hostile environment. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.