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A key pre-distribution scheme for wireless sensor networks: merging blocks in combinatorial design

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Abstract

In this paper, combinatorial design followed by randomized merging strategy is applied to key pre-distribution in sensor nodes. A transversal design is used to construct a (v, b, r, k) configuration and then randomly selected blocks are merged to form the sensor nodes. We present detailed mathematical analysis of the number of nodes, number of keys per node and the probability that a link gets affected if certain number of nodes are compromised. The technique is tunable to user requirements and it also compares favourably with state of the art design strategies. An important feature of our design is the presence of more number of common keys between any two nodes. Further, we study the situation when properly chosen blocks are merged to form sensor nodes such that the number of intra-node common key is minimized. We present a basic heuristic for this approach and show that it provides slight improvement in terms of certain parameters than our basic random merging strategy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Statistics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B T Road, Kolkata, 700108, India

    Dibyendu Chakrabarti, Subhamoy Maitra & Bimal Roy

Authors
  1. Dibyendu Chakrabarti
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  2. Subhamoy Maitra
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  3. Bimal Roy
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Correspondence to Dibyendu Chakrabarti.

Additional information

This paper is an extended and revised version of the paper presented in 8th Information Security Conference, ISC'05, pp. 89–103, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3650, Springer Verlag.

Dibyendu Chakrabarti received his Master of Technology in Computer Science in the year 1998 from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Currently he is pursuing his Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He is working in the area of Sensor Networks.

Subhamoy Maitra received his Bachelor of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering degree in the year 1992 from Jadavpur University, Kolkata and Master of Technology in Computer Science in the year 1996 from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He has completed Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute in 2001. Currently he is an Associate Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute. His research interest is in Cryptology, Digital Watermarking, and Sensor Networks.

Prof. Bimal Roy obtained his Master's degree from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, India in 1979 and Ph.D. from University of Waterloo, Canada in 1982. He is currently a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. His research area includes Cryptography, Security, Combinatorics etc. His special topics of interest are: Sensor Networks, Visual Cryptography, Hash Functions and Stream Ciphers.

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Chakrabarti, D., Maitra, S. & Roy, B. A key pre-distribution scheme for wireless sensor networks: merging blocks in combinatorial design. Int. J. Inf. Secur. 5, 105–114 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-006-0085-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-006-0085-4

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