Public-key management in mobile ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network is a new type of wireless networking paradigm which, in general, consists of solely mobile hosts and dispenses with infrastructure. One main challenge in design of mobile ad hoc networks is the vulnerability to security attacks. Without physical boundaries, a mobile ad hoc network faces many more security threats than a wired network does. Therefore the security of mobile ad hoc networks is one of the major research interests in wireless communications. In contrast with conventional networks, public key management protocols of mobile ad hoc networks do not based on infrastructures, where we can use trusted third parties or centralized servers for key management. This is because that the topology of mobile ad hoc networks is unknown due to link and node failures and to node mobility. For these factors, traditional key management solutions which require on-line trusted authorities or certificate authorities are not suitable for securing mobile ad hoc networks. In this report, we first review some existed public-key management protocols for mobile ad hoc networks and after that we propose a fully distributed public –key management model which does not need the third trusted authority.