Group Key Agreement Scheme for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Based on Threshold Secret Sharing

Designing efficient and secure group key agreement scheme is one of the key issues in mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, a novel group key agreement scheme for mobile ad hoc networks based on threshold secret sharing is proposed. In the proposed scheme, the key management and agreement is completed by multiple subgroup key managers and the group key manager of all the users in mobile ad hoc networks, which can avoid the single point of failure. By using threshold cryptography, all the members in mobile ad hoc networks collaborate to conduct the final group session key. The procedures of key agreement of every subgroup and the entire group in mobile ad hoc networks and updating of group keys with the dynamic change of members are analyzed in detail. The analysis shows that the proposed scheme satisfies the security requirements of key agreement and is efficient in computation and storage cost of the members.