Applying a Secure and Efficient Low Earth Orbit Satellite-Based Multicast Architecture in a Deployed Environment

Secure, seamless, ubiquitous communications is a necessity to support the demands of today´s first responders, whether they are military, disaster response, or Homeland Defense. Low earth orbit communications satellites are an ideal platform to ensure users in the field, at home and around the globe can always access secure networks. Security and efficiency are generally at odds during communications system development. Therefore, we developed a novel architecture that reduces the security re-keying requirements for highly mobile users by an order of magnitude over traditional approaches. Reduced re-keying enhances scalability and reduces overhead, thus providing a better end user experience and a more efficient system.