Security issues and performance study of key management techniques over satellite links

Security is an important concern in satellite multicast communication. In this paper we explore various multicast key management techniques particularly for satellite networks and measure their performance over satellite links. We propose two different solutions to enhance multicast key management for satellite communication on a predefined communication scenario. The proposed solutions are based on distributed LKH and LKH-GDH mechanisms. In the key management, we put emphasis on minimizing satellite bandwidth usage. We use conventional LKH as a reference model for performance comparisons. It is shown that while the distributed-LKH is superior to others in terms of both key initialization and key update messages, LKH-GDH is superior to others at seldom member changes and/or small number of groups