Constant-Round Password-Based Group Key Generation for Multi-layer Ad-Hoc Networks

In this paper, we consider a multi-layer mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) composed of several kinds of networking units (such as ground soldiers, tanks, and unmanned aerial vehicles) with heterogeneous resources to communicate and compute. In this multi-layer MANET, we first propose a password-based authenticated group key exchange scheme with members’ different passwords. The proposed scheme only requires constant-round to generate a group session key under the dynamic scenario, hence it is scalable, i.e., the overhead of key generation is independent of the size of a total group. We support the proposed scheme with formal security proof. Namely, our proposed scheme is the first constant-round password-based group key exchange with different passwords for the dynamic setting of MANET.