New key pre-distribution scheme using symplectic geometry over finite fields for wireless sensor networks

To achieve secure communication in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), where sensor nodes with limited computation capability are randomly scattered over a hostile territory, various key pre-distribution schemes (KPSs) have been proposed. In this paper, a new KPS is proposed based on symplectic geometry over finite fields. A fixed dimensional subspace in a symplectic space represents a node, all 1-dimensional subspaces represent keys and every pair of nodes has shared keys. But this naive mapping does not guarantee a good network resiliency. Therefore, it is proposed an enhanced KPS where two nodes have to compute a pairwise key, only if they share at least q common keys. This approach enhances the resilience against nodes capture attacks. Compared with the existence of solution, the results show that new approach enhances the network scalability considerably, and achieves good connectivity and good overall performance.