Combinatorics and Wireless Sensor Networks

无线传感器网络是低功耗设备的集合，这些设备可以无线通信，产生数据(比如从车载传感器)，并进行有限的计算。这样的设备网络有很多应用，例如：野生动物监测、灾难恢复、仓库安全和军事情况。这项提议旨在发展与安全无线传感器网络相关的数学。特别是，我们将研究在网络中的节点之间分发秘密密钥材料的数学(密钥预分发)，以便更准确地对众所周知的方案进行建模，并对这些方案进行改进。我们还将研究在部署后管理密钥的方法，以防止节点丢失或节点捕获和发现它们所拥有的密钥材料而危及网络的安全。

Wireless sensor networks are collections of low power devices which can communicate wirelessly, produce data (from an onboard sensor, say) and engage in limited computation. Such networks of devices have many applications, for example: to wildlife monitoring, disaster recovery, warehouse security and military situations.This proposal aims to develop the mathematics associated with securing wireless sensor networks. In particular, we will study the mathematics of distributing secret keying material amongst the nodes in a network ('key pre-distribution') in order to more accurately model well known schemes and in order to provide improvements on these schemes. We will also investigate ways of managing keys post-deployment, to prevent the security of the network being compromised by the loss of nodes or by the capture of nodes and the discovery of the keying material they posess.