Anonymous ID-based Group Key Agreement scheme applied in Virtual Private Ad Hoc Networks

As more and more mobile devices interconnect through largescale IP networks, new network architectures become important. A Virtual Private Ad Hoc Network (VPAN) provides such an architecture in which network virtualisation and ad hoc networking techniques are combined. A VPAN consists of a distributed set of entities of which the composition can change over time. This dynamic membership is self-organising, meaning that the members need to discover each other. VPAN members have a common trust relationship and those members that are able to connect to each other directly will organise themselves in clusters, which are interconnected through VPAN members that have network (Internet) access. In this paper, we propose an anonymous ID-based group key agreement protocol applied in the VPAN architecture to enhance the privacy of VPAN cluster nodes to the outside world and to lower the encryption overhead within their VPAN cluster. More specifically, VPAN cluster membership is anonymous and unlinkable to other sessions, and common group session keys are agreed upon within each cluster.