A Secure Key Management Scheme in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh network (WMN) is a rapid deployed, self organized and multi-hop wireless network. The wireless and distributed natures of WMNs make them subject to various kinds of attacks, which raise a great challenge in securing these networks. Most existing security mechanisms are based on cryptographic keys where a high degree key management services are in demand. In this paper, we present an effective key management scheme which seeks an encryption key assignment such that the induced network is connected and well protected against potential eavesdropping attacks. Compared with previous work, our scheme assigns the available encryption keys among all the nodes in the network. The simulation results show that our scheme out performs previous schemes through providing a network that is resistant against malicious eavesdropping attack.