YunSuk Yeo, Sangwon Hyun and Tai-Myoung Chung, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea

In the past, Ad-hoc networks were used in limited areas which require secure group communication without Internet access, such as the army or emergencies. However, Ad-hoc networks currently are widely used in variety applications like group chat, smart applications, research testbed etc. Ad-hoc network is basically group based network in the absence of access point so it is prevalent to provide group key approach to prevent information leakage. When we use group key approach, we need to consider which group key management method is the most suitable for the architecture because the cost and frequency of the rekeying operation remain as an unresolved issue. In this paper, we present analysis about existing group key management solutions for Ad-hoc network and suggest a new approach to reduce frequency of the rekeying operation.

Rekeying operation, Group key management, ad-hoc networks, Frequency of rekeying, Timedriven method