Date of Award

5-2008

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Program

Computer Science

Department

Computer Science

Major Professor

Deng, Jing

Second Advisor

Tu, Shengru

Third Advisor

DePano, Nathanael

Abstract

Creating a secure wireless sensor network involves authenticating and encrypting messages that are sent throughout the network. The communicating nodes must agree on secret keys in order to be able to encrypt packets. Sensor networks do not have many resources and so, achieving such key agreements is a difficult matter. Many key agreement schemes like Diffie-Hellman and public-key based schemes are not suitable for wireless sensor networks. Pre-distribution of secret keys for all pairs of nodes is not viable due to the large amount of memory used when the network size is large. We propose a novel key management system that works with the random key pre-distribution scheme where deployment knowledge is unknown. We show that our system saves users from spending substantial resources when deploying networks. We also test the new system’s memory usage, and security issues. The system and its performance evaluation are presented in this thesis.

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

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