An Efficient Secure Group Communication in MANET Using Fuzzy Trust Based Clustering and Hierarchical Distributed Group Key Management

Secure group communication is desired in many group oriented applications of mobile ad hoc network (MANET), and fruitful communication achieved only via trustable network environment. In order to enhance the privacy among group members, proper group key management schemes can be used to encrypt and decrypt the payload. This management is serious task in flexible network like MANET due to dynamic node movement and limited available resources. In order to get away from repeated group key refreshment for entire large network, rekeying done only for sub networks known as clusters. To cope up in this situation, the integrated approach of fuzzy trust based clustering (FTBC) and hierarchical distributed group key management is proposed in this paper. The FTBC isolate misbehaving node from legitimate data transmission and also categorize trusted and distrusted nodes by applying fuzzy logic rules. As well as there is no single solution adopted for all kind of applications, hence two more clustering schemes are proposed namely simple clustering and enhanced distributed weighted clustering are incorporated with key management to satisfy different needs. The performance of our proposal measured by introducing attackers and simulation results prove the proficiency of proposed schemes.