A scalable key management and clustering scheme for ad hoc networks

This paper describes a scalable key management and clustering scheme for secure group communications in ad hoc and sensor networks. The scalability problem is solved by partitioning the communicating devices into subgroups, with a leader in each subgroup, and further organizing the subgroups into hierarchies. Each level of the hierarchy is called a tier or layer. Key generation, distribution, and actual data transmissions follow the hierarchy. The Distributed, Efficient Clustering Approach (DECA) provides robust clustering to form subgroups, and analytical and simulation results demonstrate that DECA is energy-efficient and resilient against node mobility. Comparing with most other schemes, our approach is extremely scalable and efficient, provides more security guarantees, and is selective, adaptive and robust.