A provably secure cluster-based hybrid hierarchical group key agreement for large wireless ad hoc networks

Abstract

Group key agreement protocol permits a set of users to create a common key to make sure security of information exchange among members of the group. It is extensively used in secure multiparty computation, resource security sharing, and distributed collaborative computing etc. For large wireless ad-hoc network, there is no authentication center, the computing power and communication distance of terminals are constrained, and nodes frequently join and exit the network. For these reasons, Group Key Management for securing multicast communications in an energy-constrained large wireless ad-hoc network environment is still remains a critical and challenging issue. In this direction, we propose a cluster-based hybrid hierarchical-group key agreement (CHH-GKA) framework to provide a scalable solution for Secure Group Communication (SGC) in large wireless ad hoc networks (WANETs). This technique is based on splitting a large group into a certain number of clusters in which the last member of each of the clusters is designated as a cluster head (CH) and the last member of the group is designated as the group controller (GC). First we apply on hand Naresh–Murthy-group key agreement (NM-GKA) protocol locally in every cluster in parallel in level-I to generate CKs and then in level-II, the CHs’ use these CKs and implement NM-GKA protocol again among them to form the complete group key. Finally each CH distributes the group key to all its members through their respective CK encrypted links. In this process, first we survey several cluster-based hierarchical GKA protocols and compare the proposed one with them and show that it provides optimal performance with regard to computation and communication expenses. Further, it also handles dynamic events and is provably secure in formal security model under the cryptographic suppositions.