Abstract Mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) are a relatively new type of WSN where the sensor nodes are mobile. Compared to static WSNs, MWSNs provide many advantages, but their mobility introduces the problem of frequent reauthentication. Several mobile node reauthentication schemes based on symmetric key cryptography have been proposed to efficiently handle frequent reauthentication. However, due to security weaknesses such as unconditional forwarding or low-compromise resilience, these schemes do not satisfy the security requirements of MWSNs. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient and secure mobile node reauthentication scheme (ESMR) for MWSNs that satisfies the security requirements of MWSNs by addressing the security weaknesses of previous studies. ESMR prevents unconditional forwarding by allowing a foreign cluster head to authenticate mobile nodes, providing high-compromise resilience because it limits the use of cryptographic keys for different purposes. Security analysis shows that ESMR meets security requirements and can prevent relevant security attacks. Performance evaluation shows that ESMR is suitable for multi-hop communication environment, where the number of hops between the mobile node and cluster head is two or more. Specifically, ESMR requires less than 6% increased total energy consumption and 3% increased reauthentication latency compared with previous studies; hence, it introduces negligible performance overhead. Considering both performance and security aspects, ESMR also can be applied to single-hop communication environment.
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