Broadcast encryption based non-interactive key distribution in MANETs

•An efficient non-interactive key distribution scheme in MANET is proposed.•The scheme relies on broadcast encryption technology.•The performance analysis shows its suitability for large scale system.•The comparison indicates that it has efficiency surpassing other schemes.•An improved scheme is designed to resist adaptive chosen ciphertext attack.

This paper proposes an efficient broadcast encryption scheme for key distribution in MANET. No message exchange is required to establish a group key. The communication overhead remains unchanged as group size grows. In order for the group member to obtain session key, only one bilinear pairing computation is required. The proposal is also evaluated through efficiency, security analysis and comparison with other existing schemes. We test the efficiency of the scheme on a modern station through simulation. The performance analysis shows its suitability for large scale MANETs. It is shown that the new scheme is provable secure in standard model. The comparison indicates that this scheme has efficiency surpassing congeneric schemes. Furthermore, an improved scheme against chosen ciphertext attack (CCA) is proposed in order to enhance the security. Thus, the proposal in this paper can not only meet security demands but is also efficient in terms of computation and communication.