GENDEP: Location-aware key management for general deployment of wireless sensor networks

Limited capabilities of tiny sensor node make it difficult to build a secure wireless sensor network. To cope with this problem, location-aware key predistribution schemes have been studied but without considering irregularity of real sensing fields. They were designed for ideal sensing fields divided into uniform regular polygons but false is the real sensing field, where we face irregular obstacles, undulations, and boundaries. In this paper, we tackle this problem from practical sense and first introduce the general deployment model, comparable to the previous uniform deployment model. To construct a secure WSN in the general deployment model, we present a new framework called GENDEP, which consists of two phases: group placement and key management. In the group placement phase, we find an optimal position for sensor groups so that both connectivity and global coverage are satisfied for secure communications. In the key management phase, we devise a new structure called extended groups to partition the whole deployment area into irregular subareas. GENDEP can build secure and flexible WSNs by using the existing key predistribution schemes even designed in the uniform deployment model. To ensure practicality of GenDep, we also conduct rigorous analysis and simulation in this paper.