Efficient key management scheme to enhance security-throughput trade-off performance in wireless networks

Wireless network security schemes are characterized by parameters such as processing time and the avalanche property. These parameters tend to adversely affect the efficiency of the wireless network namely; throughput of network and lost/ retransmitted packets. The undesirable effects of processing time and avalanche property are due to the fact that, existing implementation of wireless security schemes is based on symmetric cryptography. The avalanche property makes a block cipher secure but in turn reduces throughput since it causes them to be sensitive to bit errors. In addition, processing time through the many rounds required to establish a session key increases the round trip time (RTT) for a message significantly. Hence there is need to implement a wireless security scheme which could minimize both the processing time and the avalanche property. The paper introduces a new algorithm for wireless security based on RSA public-key cryptography, convolutional codes and subband coding. It describes implementation using small integer key lengths thereby minimizing processing time and avalanche property since it is based on asymmetric cryptography. Future works in this study can show that, the implementation can fit in a single FPGA device which is close to a wireless transmitter and receiver at access points (APs).