Abstract
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising technology for providing low-cost community wireless services. Despite recent advancement in securing wireless networks, the problem of secure group communication on wireless networks has received relatively little attention. Characteristics specific to WMNs, such as limited communication range and high link error rate, raise unique challenges in designing such protocols.
In this paper we focus on providing data confidentiality for group communications on WMNs. First, we propose W-LKH, a protocol that combines centralized key management and reliable key delivery, to address the less robust communication present in wireless networks. Next, we introduce WSOM, a new protocol framework designed specifically for the WMNs to overcome the performance and security limitations of W-LKH. Simulation results show that all of the proposed protocols can provide good performance to the upper layer applications, while the WSOM protocols incur smaller overhead and are more responsive than W-LKH. Finally, we suggest the applicability of each of the proposed protocols under different application requirements.
