An architecture for key management in hierarchical mobile ad-hoc networks

In recent years, mobile ad-hoc networks have received a great deal of attention in both academia and industry to provide anytime-anywhere networking services. As wireless networks are rapidly deployed, the security of wireless environment will be mandatory. In this paper, we describe a group key management architecture and key agreement protocols for secure communication in mobile ad-hoc wireless networks (MANETs) overseen by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We use implicitly certified public keys method, which alleviates the certificate overhead and improves computational efficiency. The architecture uses a two-layered key management approach where the group of nodes is divided into: 1) Cell groups consisting of ground nodes and 2) control groups consisting of cell group managers. The chief benefit of this approach is that the effects of a membership change are restricted to the single cell group.