We follow the promising recent results of deploying the public key cryptography in sensor networks. Recent results have shown that the public key algorithms are computationally feasible on the typical sensor nodes. However, once the public key cryptography is brought to the sensor network, security services such like key authentication will be critically required. In this paper we investigate the public key authentication problem in the sensor network and provide several authentication protocols. Our protocols are mainly based on the non-solvable overhearing in the wireless environment and a distributed voting mechanism. To show the value of our protocols, we provide an extensive analysis of the used resources and the resulting security level. As well, we compare our work with other existing works. For further benefit of our protocols, we list several additional applications in the sensor network where our protocols provide a sufficient authentication under the constrained resources.