Multicast Symmetric Secret Key Management Scheme in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Abstract

Security is very important in Mobile Ad hoc Networks due to its characteristics like dynamic topology, limited battery power, open wireless medium etc. The security of MANETs in multicast transmission is yet more interesting area of research because many users form a group for transmission and reception of data in the exposed networks. There are many factors that affect the security in MANETS like battery power, storage, key dynamics, kind of traffic, routing algorithm, security protocol etc. Existing security solutions doesn’t leverage the key management issues in group communication. In our work, we developed a symmetric shared multicast key agreement protocol-“Multicast Symmetric Secret Key Management Scheme” (MC-SSKMS) for group oriented communication in MANETs. We compared the results of our proposed protocol with the two contemporary protocols using Key Delivery Ratio (KDR), Delay in key Broadcast, Energy consumption metrics.