Distributed Key Management in Wireless Mesh Networks based on Verifiable Secret Sharing

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are wireless access networks based on IP technologies, which combine the advantages of WLANs and ad hoc networks and have thus become broadband access networks with high capacity, high speed and wide coverage. Due to the multi-hop characteristics of WMNs, security has become a critical issue in WMNs and a simple and effective distributed key management is essential for the development of secure WMNs. In this paper, we propose a distributed key management scheme in WMNs by combing several key technologies, such as ECC, (t, n) threshold cryptography, verifiable secret sharing, etc. Based on a zone-based hierarchical model, our proposed key management scheme is comprised of two parts: group key management in the backbone network and session key establishment in the zone networks. We also show the security and the effectiveness of the proposed scheme through analysis and simulations.