Secure and efficient dynamic group key agreement protocol for an ad hoc network

A group key agreement protocol is a key establishment technique in which a group key is derived by two or more members as a function of information contributed by each member, such that no member can predetermine the resulting value. After a successful run of the protocol all members share an identical secret key. When the group composition changes due to join (leave) of new (old) member(s), one can employ supplementary group key agreement protocol to derive a new group key. Thus, they are well suited to the group key establishment needs of mobile ad hoc networks. The problem of designing secure and efficient group key agreement protocol for an ad hoc network with low communication cost, computation cost, and round complexity is a very challenging task. In this paper, we present briefly some group key agreement protocols and analyse them for efficient dynamic membership events for judging their suitability for an ad hoc network.