Authenticated Group Key Agreement Against DoS in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Heterogeneous wireless networks (HWNs) are gaining popularity due to its convenience for mobile users to be connected to the network even when "on the move". Group key agreement (GKA) protocols are used to secure group communications in these networks. However, most of the GKA protocols in current literature do not consider protection against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that can disrupt GKA services. In this paper, we present an authenticated, energy efficient and scalable GKA protocol that provides protection against DoS attacks and key confirmation properties. Unlike current communication energy analysis that uses only a single energy per bit value for transmission and reception, our communication energy analysis separates point-to-point (P2P) and broadcast communications to provide more detailed study on communications in GKA. Both the complexity and energy costs analysis shows that our proposed protocol is efficient and suitable for HWNs.