Identity-Based and Threshold Key Management in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Robust key management services are central to ensuring security of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In this paper, a novel key management scheme for MANETs is introduced, which exploits advantages of identity-based signcryption mechanism combined with threshold cryptography. The major innovative aspect of this scheme is the use of on-line virtual private key generator (PKG) to provide private key updating services for client nodes and master secret key share refreshing services for all server nodes. Thus, the proposed scheme enables flexible and efficient key management while respecting the unique constraints of MANETs. In this scheme, the public key certificates are not needed and every node uses its identity as its public key. It greatly decreases the need of computing and storage abilities of nodes, as well as communication cost for network key management