An efficient authentication protocol for virtual subnets on mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile Ad hoc networks are composed of self-organizing, multi-relaying nodes connected by wireless links that the virtual subnet technology provides support to reduce redundant transmission for efficient communication is necessary. In order to satisfy security requirements, a node of virtual subnet need to identify the other member nodes, hence the certificate and authentication of virtual subnets must be established to distinguish the member nodes and the unallied nodes. In this paper, an efficient authentication protocol for virtual subnets on mobile ad hoc networks is proposed to aim for the efficiency of certificate and authentication. For the purpose, nodes of a virtual subnet have their private key respectively and they share a public key to reduce the authentication overhead and improve the efficiency. According to protocol analysis, the proposed protocol will show that it is robust with respect to certificate and authentication and very suitable for virtual subnet communication on wireless ad hoc networks.