Improving performance overhead of a trust-clustering key management protocol in ad hoc networks

Abstract

Group key management is a challenge for securing group communications in the networks. This area is well studied in the literature. The strict characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks makes the adaptation of classical existing solutions a real challenge. Elliptic curves cryptography (ECC) became the choice of encryption for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. It uses very small keys and is mathematically very effective, which makes them ideal in communication for small devices used today. Scalability is a basic factor that determines the efficiency of any group key management protocol. Recent solutions for MANETs are oriented towards hierarchical solutions of group key agreement using clustering. Trust oriented clustering scheme is the most adequate for secure group communication. We focus in this paper on ECC technology and its contribution for group key agreement solutions in mobile ad hoc networks using trust criteria for cluster's formation. We propose a novel solution to reduce the group key establishment overhead. The effectiveness of our solution lies in its avoidance of malicious members from being chosen as group controllers (clusterheads). The performance evaluation of the proposed solution shows that is globally satisfactory.