Abstract—A mobile ad hoc network is a collection of autonomous nodes that communicate with each other by forming a multi-top wireless network. Different from conventional wireless networks, the resource of the nodes in ad hoc networks is limited and there may be tens of thousands of low-power energy constrained nodes in ad hoc networks. As such, the costs of the nodes resource and the network size should be taken into consideration when constructing a group key agreement protocol in the ad hoc networks. In this paper, an efficient and scalable group key agreement protocol based on layer-cluster group model for mobile ad hoc networks was proposed. In this protocol, multi-linear map is employed on layer-cluster structure to establish and allocate group key. So that it can not only meet security demands of larger mobile ad hoc networks but also improve executing performance.

Index Terms—ad hoc networks, layer-cluster, group key agreement, multi-linear map

Cite: Zhang Li-Ping and Wang Yi, "A New Group Key Agreement Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks," Journal of Communications, vol. 5, no. 7, pp.545-550, 2010. Doi: 10.4304/jcm.5.7.545-550