Cluster-Based Certificate Chain for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A recent trend of wireless technology is to set up the wireless connections among close-by mobile nodes. This class of network is called as Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET). In MANET, mobile nodes can temporarily form a network and they cooperatively offer several functions. Hence, it is hard to apply traditional security techniques such as public key certification based on PKI. In this paper, we propose a practical model of public key certificate chain for MANET. Our scheme does not rely on a central server, but rather we utilize the Cluster-Based Routing Protocol (CBRP) for MANET to issue certificates in a distributed fashion. In our scheme, the certificates are chained very effectively and the signed messages can be transferred over certificate chain. Our scheme works well in a setting where the network topology is dynamically changed. Also, our scheme is more efficient than the related localized scheme [15].