The wandering nodes: key management for low-power mobile ad hoc networks

This paper describes a key management scheme that is designed to work in low-power mobile ad hoc networks. The key management scheme is built around the concept of a neighborhood in which nodes dynamically establish link keys based on keying material they already possess. As nodes wander through the network, their neighborhood changes and the keys are updated to reflect this change in environment. Our protocol is designed to work in power constrained environments and only uses efficient symmetric cryptographic primitives.