A secure and efficient group key agreement approach for mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks have been used in many application areas such as sensors, file sharing and vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Providing secure communications among the users in such networks is a significant issue. Group key agreement protocols are frequently used to provide security in mobile ad hoc networks. There is a number of problems related to the use of group key agreement protocols in mobile ad hoc networks, such as adaptation in cluster-based communications, securely selecting the cluster head for inter-cluster communications, providing secure group key update mechanism for dynamic groups and reducing costs of communications and computations. In this study, we propose a secure and efficient group key agreement protocol that is adaptive for cluster-based communications in mobile ad hoc networks. We describe a novel secure cluster-head selection mechanism in the proposed protocol. The protocol provides security for dynamic group operations in addition to the basic security properties. The proposed protocol also provides better performance in terms of reducing the communications and computational costs. Finally, we present a set of simulations for the proposed protocol in mobile ad hoc networks scenario.