Secure communications for cluster-based ad hoc networks using node identities

Ad hoc networks are self-configurable networks with dynamic topologies. All involved nodes in the network share the responsibility for routing, access, and communications. The mobile ad hoc network can be considered as a short-lived collection of mobile nodes communicating with each other. Such networks are more vulnerable to security threats than traditional wireless networks because of the absence of the fixed infrastructure. For providing secure communications in such networks, lots of mechanisms have been proposed since the early 1990s, which also have to deal with the limitations of the mobile ad hoc networks, including high power saving and low bandwidth. Besides, public key infrastructure (PKI) is a well-known method for providing confidential communications in mobile ad hoc networks. In 2004, Varadharajan et al. proposed a secure communication scheme for cluster-based ad hoc networks based on PKI. Since the computation overheads of the PKI cryptosystem are heavy for each involved communicating node in the cluster, we propose an ID-based version for providing secure communications in ad hoc networks. Without adopting PKI cryptosystems, computation overheads of involved nodes in our scheme can be reduced by 25% at least.