RAGHC: Reliable authenticated group head communication for wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks are the hybrid networks having infrastructure based gateways on one hand and on the other hand having mobile or fixed clients. Group communication is an important paradigm to study for its variety of applications such as video conferencing, broadcasting, online games, distance learning. Security is a critical issue in group communication. Mostly, group communication relies on its head for communication, so securing the group head is vital. In this paper, we present reliable authenticated group head communication (RAGHC) architecture. This architecture is organized into three parts i.e., group head authentication, secure inter group communication via group heads and group head maintenance. Demonstrating the inter group communication is an additional contribution of this study. By extensive simulation we demonstrate that how group heads are created authenticated and how they communicate within the group and outside the group securely. Comparative results with previous techniques show that RAGHC is better in terms of packet delivery ratio and packet delay.