Lightweight PSK-based key derivation and rekeying for resource-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) communications

Resource constrained Internet of Things (IoT) devices require lightweight key establishment and rekeying techniques. This paper proposes a DNA assisted, pre shared key (PSK) based mechanism that uses a master key, fresh random values, and reversible DNA encoding to derive session keys without transmitting them. The protocol incorporates session freshness, canonical transcript construction, and authenticated key confirmation to address replay attacks, transcript modification, and key consistency. The security analysis examines key confidentiality, authentication, replay resistance, and brute-force risks under the stated PSK assumptions. Experimental evaluation focuses on execution time, throughput, and memory requirements, while energy consumption and hardware-level validation remain future work.