An Efficient Key Management Scheme based on Elliptic Curve Signcryption for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks



an efficient key management scheme based on public key elliptic curves signcryption scheme for Heterogeneous sensor networks has been proposed. The proposed protocol is optimized for cluster sensor networks and is efficient in terms of complexity, number of message exchange, computation, and storage requirements with optimized security benefits for clustered environment. The proposed key management possesses not only confidentiality but also characteristics like unforgeability and non repudiation.

In the past several years, sensor networks have been a very active research area. Most previous research efforts consider homogeneous sensor networks, where all sensor nodes have the same capabilities. However, a homogeneous ad hoc network suffers from poor fundamental limits and performance. Several recent works studied Heterogeneous Sensor Networks (HSNs) where sensor nodes have different capabilities in terms of communication, computation, energy supply, storage space, reliability, and other aspects [1]. Sensor networks must arrange several types of data packets, including packets of routing protocols and packets of key management protocols. The key establishment technique employed in a given sensor network should meet several requirements to be efficient. These requirements may include supporting innetwork processing and facilitating self-organization of data, among others. However, the key establishment technique for a secure application must minimally incorporate authenticity, confidentiality, integrity, scalability, and flexibility. An MICA2 mote developed by the University of California at Berkeley has an 8-bit 7.3 MHz processor with 4 KB RAM and 128 KB of programmable ROM [2]. WSNs have mostly been using symmetric key and other non public-key encryption schemes [3-4]. A drawback to these schemes is that they are not as flexible as public-key schemes, but they are computationally faster. With limited memory, computing and communication capacity, and power supply, sensor nodes cannot employ sophisticated cryptographic technologies such as typical public key cryptographs. The use of public key cryptography on WSNs has not been tested enough to rule it out completely. Through the use of the MICA2 mote and TinyOS [5], public key schemes are tested to determine their performance [6]. With Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) [7], key management becomes easy. ECC was implemented on two 8-bit platforms [8]. Performance optimizations were applied due to limited resources. RSA-1024 and RSA-2048 was also implemented for comparison. ECC-160 resulted with a private-key faster than RSA-1024. The performance was even more favorable when comparing ECC-224 to RSA-2048. ECC, on both platforms, outperforms RSA-1024 private-key operation. ECC also improves its performance over RSA as the word size of the processor decreases. A MICA2 mote using ECC can effectively and securely distribute the 80-bit TinySec keys. ECC-163 is all that is needed. ECC is as secure as Diffie–Hellman while using vastly smaller key sizes. ECC also offers perfect forward security.
ECC key management schemes include three well-known ECC schemes: (1) the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key agreement scheme, (2) the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), and (3) the Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES). ECDH is a variant of the Diffie- Hellman key agreement protocol [9] on elliptic curve groups. ECDSA is a variant of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) [10] that operates on elliptic curve groups. ECIES is a public-key encryption scheme which provides semantic security against an adversary who is allowed to use chosen-plaintext and chosenciphertext attacks. ECIES is also known as the Elliptic Curve Augmented Encryption Scheme (ECAES) or simply the Elliptic Curve Encryption Scheme. These ECC schemes allow smaller key sizes for similar security level to the alternatives such as the original DH and DSA schemes. For each of the schemes, a party that would like to use the scheme needs to agree on some domain parameters such as the elliptic curve and a point G on the curve, and must have a key pair consisting of a private key d and a public key Q = dG. Recently, EC signcryption scheme is a new public key cryptographic method that fulfils both the functions of secure encryption and digital signature, but with a cost smaller than that required by signature- then-encryption as in ECDSA has been proposed by Zheng [11]. Public key signcryption possesses not only confidentiality but also characteristics like unforgeability and non repudiation. In this paper, an efficient key management scheme based on public key elliptic curves signcryption scheme for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks has been proposed. The proposed protocol is optimized for cluster sensor networks and is efficient in terms of complexity, number of message exchange, computation, and storage requirements with optimized security benefits for clustered environment. The proposed key management possesses not only confidentiality but also characteristics like unforgeability and non repudiation.

Click here for free

download this paper


CSE PROJECTS

FREE IEEE PAPER AND PROJECTS

FREE IEEE PAPER