Self-organized key management with trusted certificate exchange in MANET

Abstract

In MANET, security is more challenging due to problems related to key exchange. It is necessary to secure the exchanges in MANETs for assuring the development of services in the network. The self-organized MANET is visualized as a key communication technology enabler for application such as network centric warfare, disaster relief operations, emergency situations, and intelligent transportation systems. In this paper, we propose a self-organized key management technique coupled with trusted certificate exchange for mobile ad hoc networks. The proposed architecture consists of one coordinator node, servers and normal mobile nodes. The coordinator acts as a mediator for transmitting the message among the servers and mobile nodes. Each node generates its own public/private key pairs using server-signed public keying technique. Then multi-path certificate exchange technique is employed where public key of the nodes is certified by different nodes. Those nodes that issued the certificates are validated using the Eigen Vector Reputation Centrality. By simulation results, we show that the proposed approach improves security.

Keywords

• Mobile ad hoc networks (MANET)
• Trusted third party (TTP)
• Distributed trusted authority (DTA)
• Public/private key pairs