Secure Ad-Hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing using identity based symmetric key management

Managing keys for secure communication and routing in Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a significant and challenging task due to its battery constrained functionality, dynamic topology, minimal physical security and varying capacity links. Identity based key management techniques have less memory storage cost and simple key management process compared to other methods such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). In this paper we propose identity based symmetric key management solution using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and bilinear pairing concept to generate the symmetric keys to secure communication and routing in MANETs. We realized the elliptic curve point generation, addition and multiplication functionalities from scratch and tested them against standard implementations like PARI/GP. We modified the Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) code to suit the security requirements and used them to validate secure communication on MANET testbed. We show that proposed identity based symmetric key management scheme is fast, simple, reliable, computationally less expensive and has less storage cost.