Enhancing Security and Efficiency in Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: A Lightweight Key Management Framework

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) obtains more attention due to their wide range of applications such as underwater oil field discovery, Tsunami monitoring systems, surveillance systems, and many more. In such a resource-constrained environment, sensors are more vulnerable to malicious attacks. Node authentication and secure communication is one of the vital issues in UWSNs. In this study, a secure and lightweight key management framework for UWSNs is proposed. The proposed framework includes key generation, key distribution, revocation, and authentication mechanisms along with lightweight implementation, and scalability. We use an elliptic curve-based algorithm for key distribution, and certificate revocation list (CRL) for key revocation. We also examine the performance of the proposed framework taking into account the amount of communication overhead as well as the level of security. The simulation results show that the proposed framework provides better security with less communication overhead compared to existing frameworks. This framework can be used for secure data communication in UWSNs, which has various applications in oceanography, environmental monitoring, and military operations.