An Enhanced Key Management Scheme for LoRaWAN

Abstract

The LoRaWAN is one of the new low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) standards applied to Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The key features of LPWAN are its low power consumption and long-range coverage. The LoRaWAN 1.1 specification includes a basic security scheme. However, this scheme could be further improved in the aspect of key management. In this paper, LoRaWAN 1.1 security is reviewed, and enhanced LoRaWAN security with a root key update scheme is proposed. The root key update will make cryptoanalysis of security keys in LoRaWAN more difficult. The analysis and simulation show that the proposed root key update scheme requires fewer computing resources compared with other key derivation schemes, including the scheme used in the LoRaWAN session key update. The results also show the key generated in the proposed scheme has a high degree of randomness, which is a basic requirement for a security key.