Protocol Selection of Appropriate Key Management in Passive Defense Applications ofWireless Sensor Networks

The Need to modern and reliable communication systems, seems to be more important, as the probability of society chaos, terrorist threats and natural disasters increase. These communication tools should be able to transmit, within the shortest possible time, the vital and emergency messages from crisis- stricken regions to control and management centers and from there, to endangered and relief needing people so that their lives and properties could be protected against accidents and disasters or the damage rate could be mitigated. One of the most important features of these systems is that they are able to act well under severe conditions and that their performance are not intentionally and unintentionally vulnerable. Wireless sensor networks are one of the most advanced technologies for such cases. Key management has remained a challenging issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to the constraints of sensor node resources. Various key management schemes that trade off security and operational requirements have been proposed in recent years. In this article, we first examine the security and operational requirements of WSNs and then review eight key management protocols: Eschenauer,q-composite,Yener, Du, LEAP, SHELL, Panja, and Yang and analyze them in the case of security and operational requirements. Finally we propose some proposals for selecting a suitable protocol.