Key Distribution Protocols for Secure Multicast Communication Survivable in MANETs

M. Striki, J. S. Baras

2003 IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), Boston, Massachusetts, October 13-16, 2003.

Abstract

In this paper we develop a secure, robust and scalable key management scheme for multicast communications in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). Most key distribution protocols of today are primarily designed for wire-line networks. Frequent node failures, network partitions, inefficient computational and communication capabilities of wireless nodes, network delay, bad quality of signal etc, are some of the reasons why they fail to work properly in MANETs. We classify existing and newly developed protocols in two families, contributory and non-contributory. We evaluate them and compare their performance. We focus on studying and developing key distribution techniques that achieve scalability and high performance within our framework without sacrificing the security level of the network. We also describe a hierarchical two level hybrid key management scheme that utilizes some of the above protocols in the appropriate combinations to further reduce the storage, communication and computation costs of nodes.