Mohsen Sharifi - Computer Engineering Department Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran
Saeed Pourroostaei - Computer Engineering Department Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran
Sedighian Kashi Saeed - Computer Engineering Department Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

Given the importance of security for wireless sensor networks that reside in adversarial environments, a number of security policies have been introduced that use security keys to secure the network. They nonetheless incur unnecessary overheads due to inefficient management and distribution of keys. They are also mostly ignorant of the failures of the network constituents and the consequent whole or partial unavailability of the network. This paper presents a new resource-aware and secure key distribution solution that also enhances the availability of the network by increasing the lifetime of the base station, cluster heads, and cluster nodes. This has been mainly achieved by replacing critical nodes, namely, base station and cluster heads, which are going to fail or are prone to failure, with reserved nodes that continue to carry out the same responsibilities afterwards. Simulation results show higher availability and approximately 20-30% increase in efficiency under our protocol compared to networks running normal key distribution protocols.

Wireless Sensor Networks Security, Availability, Key Management, Key Distribution, Reserved Node