Efficient group key management of ZigBee network for home automation

Traditional network requires group key and session key for sending the encrypted message for specific group. If group member is changed, server needs to re-distribute the group and session key. In ZigBee network, the network key can be used for group management. But it needs to be encrypted when it is distributed to nodes. In this paper, we propose the efficient group key management with user authentication protocol in ZigBee network, especially for home automation, which generates the group key with combination of entity's secret information. This approach reduces re-distribution of keys with encryption and the storage area for saving the group and session key.