Smart dust security - key infection revisited

Sensor network, key management, key infection, key predistribution, smart dust, amplification, protocol

Sensor network is a notion denoting an interesting subset ofself-organising wireless networks. These networks are rather dense aseach node have typically more than dozen neighbours, and large withtens to hundreds thousands of nodes. Applications of such networksassume distributed environmental sensing performed by each sensor inthe network, where data from a particular sensor gain value only whencombined with data from a relatively high number of other sensors. Oneof the open security questions in this specific environment is apossibility to lower requirements on key distribution and keymanagement and thus decrease production costs. One of the possible waysis ``key infection''. The paper recaps a protocol and already publishedresults. It also elaborates the concept of key infection by introducinga new variant of security amplification protocol, and presents someinteresting results obtained by simulations.