Study On Cluster-based Distributed Authentication And Key Management In Mobile Ad Hoc Network

Mobile Ad hoc network has become the most important communication style in digital battle, because it does not need fixed infrastructure, it can be installed quickly and is hard to be destroyed. However, the natures of mobile Ad Hoc networks make themselves vulnerable to security attacks. The key questions of security are authentication of the users' identification and key management mechanism. In traditional network, certification authority achieves the function of authentication and key management. But centralized mechanism is not applicable in distributed mobile ad hoc network, because network would be paralyzed if certification authority was attacked.By researching the mobile ad hoc network, we propose distributed authentication and key management scheme on cluster structure (CDAKM, Cluster-based Distributed Authentication and Key Management) on the base of researchers' works. In that scheme, combining distributed authentication with cluster structure can enhance scalability of securing scheme. Roaming node must be authenticated by other cluster heads before it becomes a member of one cluster, which can avoid attacking of the roaming node. Cluster head and cluster members executing the function of CA together can solve the problem of single-node failure, efficiently increase the security of network, for attacker only obtained one sharing if cluster head has been attacked. Cluster head and cluster member issuing sharing-signed certificate can decrease time of roaming obtaining network-signed certificate. Roaming node communicates with nodes in the cluster when it obtains sharing which can decrease the overhead of network.There are five chapters, we firstly introduce mobile ad hoc network, structure. Secondly, we analyze distributed authentication and key management. Then we propose the scheme of CDAKM on the base of works which narrated before in our paper, simulate and analyze the security, overhead and the time of roaming nodes obtaining certificate in the scheme, prove the availability of the scheme we propose. At last, we summarize this paper and give the suggestions for future researches.