A Disconnection-Resistant Authenticated Diffie-Hellman Protocol in Wireless Weak-Link Sensor Networks

The application of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in underground or underwater regions is becoming increasingly prevalent. This specific type of WSNs are referred to as wireless weak-link sensor networks (WWSNs), whose key distribution is identified as a prerequisite for ensuring network security. However, due to the fragile links of WWSNs, it is not feasible to directly transfer existing authenticated Diffie-Hellman (ADH) protocols from traditional WSNs to WWSNs. To address this challenge, we propose a disconnection-resistant authenticated Diffie-Hellman protocol (D-ADH) for key distribution in WWSNs. For mitigating the adverse impact of fragile links, we significantly reduce the number of node interactions in existing ADH protocols by having the sensor node use fixed negotiation public keys. Each sensor node only needs to receive the broadcast message of the base station on a single occasion to generate the session key. The results of simulation experiments and security analysis demonstrate that the proposed D-ADH protocol exhibits the lowest energy consumption, the longest network lifetime, the highest probability of successful key distribution and good network scalability compared to the state-of-the-art protocols, while maintaining an acceptable middle level security.