Making the key agreement protocol in mobile ad hoc network more efficient

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc networks offer convenient infrastructureless communications over the shared wireless channel. However, the nature of mobile ad hoc networks makes them vulnerable to security attacks, such as passive eavesdropping over the wireless channel and denial of service attacks by malicious nodes. To ensure the security, several cryptography protocols are implemented. Due to the resource scarcity in mobile ad hoc networks, the protocols must be communication efficient and need as less computational power as possible. Broadcast communication is an important operation for many application in mobile ad hoc networks. To securely broadcast a message, all the members in the network need share a group key so that they can use efficient symmetric encryption, such as DES and AES. Several group key management protocols have been proposed. However, not all of them are communication efficient when applied to mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical key agreement protocol that is communication efficient to mobile ad hoc networks. We also show how to manage the group efficiently in a mobile environment. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.