Certificate chain based authentication in MANETS using 4th generation technologies

MANET security is becoming a challenge for researchers with the lapse of time. The infrastructure-less networks gives rise to authentication and key-management problems in the MANETs. Most of the TTP (trusted third party) and non-TTP based schemes seem to be infeasible for being adopted in MANETs. A hybrid scheme of the two can server the purpose. One of the hybrid schemes addressed these issues effectively by pre-assigned logins on offline basis and issuing certificates on its basis using 4^th generation services (4G); however, the scheme suffered overheads in different communication scenarios. Another non-TTP scheme based on certificate chain approach in MANETS tried to resolve key management by the nodes themselves but faced the security problems due to the blind trust being put on the nodes for adding other nodes in the MANET. Both schemes seem to have weaknesses regarding overheads and security concerns. We have tried to overcome these by merging both schemes and introduce an optimized solution, eliminating the flaws of each scheme. The proposed model authenticates the nodes through 4G services and enables communication after the nodes being the part of certificate chain-based groups.