Security Assessment for Key Management in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a kind of wireless communication system that doesn't have base stations or routers. The wireless connections can be a standard Wi-Fi connection or satellite, or another medium such as a cellular transmission. Specific applications like military or public emergency require secure group communication in ad hoc environments. Good Key management is very important to get protection in any communication system. This paper presents most problems of securing key management in ad hoc networks. It presents a survey of different types of key management protocols in wired networks and in ad hoc networks. It presents the most common kinds of attacks in ad hoc networks. A new efficient approach is proposed. It is based on dividing the members into clusters. This scheme assumes a maximum allowed number of members in each cluster. This reduces the required number of encryption and decryption operations for each join operation in the cluster. This is most suitable for Mobile Ad hoc Networks.