Efficient hybrid key agreement protocol for wireless ad hoc networks

Secure and efficient communication among a set of mobile nodes is one of the most important aspects in ad-hoc wireless networks. To ensure the security, several cryptography protocols must be implemented. Due to the resource scarcity in wireless networks, the protocols must be communication efficient and need as less computational power as possible. To secure the group broadcasting in wireless networks, often a group key is needed so that efficient conventional encryption, such as DES and AES, can be used. Several group key management protocols have been proposed. However, not all of them are communication efficient when applied to wireless ad-hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a key agreement protocol that is communication efficient by using connected dominating set concept to set up subgroups among all wireless nodes. We also show how to manage the group efficiently in a mobile environment. Keywords— Wireless networks, network security, key agreement, connected dominating set.