Energy and mobility based group key management in mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc network is an effective networking system which facilitates exchanging data between wireless devices, without the support of wireless access points and base stations. Providing secure communication is a major research avenue in MANETs because of the dynamic topology due to mobility and energy constraint. To ensure security ID - based key management was introduced. Most of the existing systems have provided various key management schemes like ID - based multiple secret key with threshold cryptography, Hierarchical Identity Based Key management, Cluster Based Identity Management etc. Though these schemes are efficient in providing security, the energy consumption is high. This leads to the need of an energy proficient key management method. Our proposed scheme EMBGK - Energy and Mobility based Group Key Management scheme concentrates in: 1) Cluster Formation 2) Link Stability 3) Mobility Prediction and 4) Group Key Management. The individual node properties are verified and the nodes are organized into clusters based on their transmission range. The mobility is predicted based on the previous positions of the node. Using all this, an optimized method is implemented for the cluster head election and cluster formation. The proposed scheme saves time and energy for frequent cluster updations and key updations. To preclude the non-group memberships from interpreting the data, complex key called Group Key is being generated. The secrecy of the group key is being maintained. Group key avoids the issue of certificates and third party involvement. Frequent updations, the possibility of key hacking and exchanging certificates are being reduced. The results show that the throughput, life time of the nodes, link stability is increased with minimum consumption of energy. Our proposed scheme also reduces overhead, end-end delay, jitter and packet loss. The number of key updations is being reduced in our proposed system as the mobility is predicted and link stability is maintained.