A scalable rekeying scheme for secure multicast in IEEE 802.16 network

Abstract

IEEE 802.16e is the next generation wireless metropolitan area network (WMAN) that provides wide coverage and higher bandwidth than conventional wireless networks. Multicast or group communication is an efficient scheme to communicate with several users simultaneously. IEEE 802.16e introduces Multicast and Broadcast Rekeying algorithm (MBRA) for secure group communication in WiMAX network. But it has been shown in different literatures that MBRA lacks scalability as well as forward and backward secrecy. So different types of multicast security protocols have been proposed in several literatures where best known performance (in terms of scalability, security and simplicity) is achieved with ELAPSE that works in O(log n) message complexity. But this is also a scalability issue with large value of n. In this paper we propose a scalable algorithm for secure multicast in WiMAX, based on a hybrid group rekeying protocol with a trade-off between collusion resistance and scalability. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.