Secure multicast model for ad-hoc military networks

Multicasting is an efficient way to deliver real time data to a large group of users in the battle field military applications. The very nature of military applications necessitates the use of security features such as data confidentiality, source/group authentication etc., which are not readily offered by multicast. Further, the mobile ad hoc network (MANET) characteristics of the close collaborative military systems induce additional unpredictability into the design of an effective protocol for secure multicast. The energy expenditure in such an environment also poses a supplementary performance bottleneck in achieving scalability of mechanisms employed. This work tries to capture all such secure ad-hoc multicast features and attempts to integrate them with multilevel security. Multilevel security is the ability to distinguish subjects according to classification levels, which determines the degree to which they can access confidential objects. In the case of groups, this means that some members can exchange messages at a higher sensitivity level than others. Our work, also intends to highlight how the two issues of routing and security can be subtly merged into one not affecting each others performance, rather complementing each other to make the protocol more efficient in terms of computation.