A HYBRID GROUP BASED RE-KEY MANAGEMENT SCHEME FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION IN WIRELESS SENSOR

Abstract

Secured Communication is primarily important in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), since the communication signals are explicitly available as they broadcast through the air. These networks are more vulnerable to attacks extending from passive eavesdropping to active snooping. In this paper, a hybrid Group based Re-Key Management Scheme (HG-RMS) is proposed. The objective of this paper is to provide a secure group communication in WSNs. The Group Controller is elected for each group to manage the group members. The proposed HG-RMS incorporates the Modified Hybrid Energy Efficient Distributed (M-HEED) protocol to elect the group controller. Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA) is used by the Key Management Center (KMC) to generate the keys and distribute to the group controllers. The key exchange mechanism is explored for secure communication between the users. Node compromise attacks are detected and prevented based on the periodic broadcast messages. The re - keying process is initiated whenever a node joins/leaves the group. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme performs better than the existing Cluster based Group Key Management (CB-GKM) in terms of energy, privacy level, memory, and time consumption.