Y.Kumar, A.Nageswara Rao
In near future, the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is widely used in many applications like military and civil domains. The wireless sensor networks are always deployed in hostile and pervasive environment. Security is major concern in the wireless sensor network. The traditional network security methods are not suitable for wireless sensor networks because of limited resource. Several Key management and establishment schemes have been proposed to provide light weight ciphers. The key management schemes play an important role in wireless sensor networks to achieve security. In this paper a survey of key management schemes in wireless sensor networks has been executed. Each and every key management schemes has some trade off between limited resource and security. Classification of key management schemes based on encryption was done. Further based on key pre-distribution (with or without deployment knowledge) and rekeying mechanism, the key management schemes have been analysed and their limitations and advantages have been summarized.