Power proximity based key management for secure multicast in ad hoc networks

As group-oriented services become the focal point of ad hoc network applications, securing the group communications becomes a default requirement. In this paper, we address the problem of group access in secure multicast communications for wireless ad hoc networks. We argue that energy expenditure is a scarce resource for the energy-limited ad hoc network devices and introduce a crosslayer approach for designing energy-efficient, balanced key distribution trees to perform key management. To conserve energy, we incorporate the network topology (node location), the “power proximity” between network nodes and the path loss characteristics of the medium in the key distribution tree design. We develop new algorithms for homogeneous as well as heterogeneous environments and derive their computational complexity. We present simulation studies showing the improvements achieved for three different but common environments of interest, thus illustrating the need for cross-layer design approaches for security in wireless networks.