A distributed hierarchical key management scheme for mobile Ad hoc networks

In MANET, when a node is compromised it tends to reveal the other node's key information and corrupts the whole network. The scalable method of cryptographic key management (SMOCK) proposes a method to deal with such node compromise attacks. But it has certain main drawbacks such as over dependent on centralized server and increase in key-pair when node increases. To deal with these drawbacks, we present an enhanced hierarchical key management scheme using a stable and power efficient cluster management technique. Each cluster head retains the public key of its member nodes only and act as a router when dealing with nodes of other cluster members. Using this technique, the overhead on centralized server is reduced. Moreover, the need of each node storing all public keys are diminished thus minimizing the storage overhead on each node. By Simulation results, we show that our proposed scheme achieves better delivery ratio and resilience with reduced delay and overhead.