Group key management utilizing Huffman and Petrick based approaches

One of the major issues in secure multicast networks is scalable key distribution. When user(s) leave(s) the group, the group key has to be changed and the new key has to be distributed to the remaining users. If the size of the group is large, distribution overhead increases. We propose the Modified Huffman Technique for efficiently distributing the key(s), after the removal of users from a secure group. In the presence of multiple leaves, the overhead gets compounded. We utilize Petrick's method of Boolean logic minimization instead of QuineMcLuskey method for a better performance in the case of multiple leaves. Simulation results confirm that our scheme minimizes the number of keys that has to be changed after user's exit from the network and hence reduces the redistribution overhead.