Group Rekeying Schemes for Secure Group Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are promising solutions for many applications. However, wireless sensor nodes suffer from many constraints such as low computation capability, small memory, limited energy resources, and so on. Grouping is an important technique to localize computation and reduce communication overhead in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, the authors use grouping to refer to the process of combining a set of sensor nodes with similar properties. They propose four Centralized Group reKeying (CGK) schemes for secure group communication in sensor networks. The lifetime of a group is divided into three phases, i.e., group formation, group maintenance, and group dissolution. They demonstrate how to set up the group and establish the group key in each phase.